IN FOCUS: Can driverless buses become a mainstay on Singapore’s roads?

“But then you are doubling down on resources to cover where AV tech is not able to provide for,” he said.

Mr Dexter Ang, marketing manager of A&S Transit, said drivers often have to react to information given on the ground, such as locating places based on human descriptions.

His company’s bus drivers, who primarily transport workers between dormitories and construction sites, often face unforeseen circumstances such as inclement weather, forcing last-minute changes to pick-up points, as well as roads that are not reflected on maps.

“At the moment, (the industry) is still quite human-dependent,” he said.

Associate Professor Theseira said that even on set routes, such as public bus services, there are complexities that are best handled by human drivers for now.

In Singapore, most bus stops have dedicated bays for buses to pull in. But a common situation arises when the bay is not long enough to accommodate several buses arriving at the same time.

“We all know that human bus drivers alternate between practices like, if they’re at a certain point, they won’t open the doors and let anybody on board, but at a certain point, they will,” he said. “All these things have to be regularised for the (AV) system.”

Such nuances in operating vehicles in public are partly why it has taken so long for AVs to gain traction, even though trials around the world began earlier this century, he added.

“It’s not actually a Singapore problem, it’s a global problem, and the global problem really has to do with the fact that the early advances in AV technology proved to be illusory,” he said.

While technological breakthroughs in the early 2010s showed that it was feasible for autonomous vehicles to be on public roads, the leap from that to replacing a human driver has yet to be fully bridged.

“The challenge is, can they do it to a level necessary to do everything we expect a human driver to do?” he said.

“Stuff like all your lane change manoeuvres, or picking up passages and so on, that is where it starts to be a lot more troublesome … that’s the problem that has stymied everybody.”

Associate Professor Raymond Ong, a transport infrastructure researcher at the National University of Singapore (NUS), agreed that protocols may have to be put in place for AVs to handle “edge events”.

These include situations such as illegal parking, jaywalking, sudden lane changes and the need to yield to emergency vehicles.