Ryan Chin: Cities are basically systems of systems.
And those systems can operate optimally or not optimally.
And a key component of it is how we move around in that.
We should be able to provide
equitable mobility.
Give you a ride from any place,
no matter what your
economic background is,
what you look like, where you come from,
all of that can be programmed
into a vehicle.
Chris Osgood: So, what you're seeing right now
in the screen on the far left
is the regional highway system.
It is moving fairly slowly right now.
Where we often see congestion in the city of Boston
are those places where people are trying to get onto
regional roads, the highway system.
I have the honor of serving as
Mayor Walsh's Chief of Streets,
and we're focused on those nine square miles
of Boston that are our streets.
As we think about the future of the city
and those things that will potentially
most fundamentally change transportation,
autonomous vehicles is at the top of that list.
Chin: There's a heaven-or-hell scenario
that we talk a little bit about,
the autonomy heaven or hell scenario.
The hell scenario is that we have individual
internal-combustion autonomous vehicles.
And eventually we'll have an autonomous traffic jam
full of gas-emitting, fossil-fuel-burning,
single-occupant vehicles that are autonomous.
The heaven scenario is the opposite.
Optimus Ride is based in Boston,
and the reason why we based it there is that
it has all the unique roads, all the unique drivers,
and all the unique weather of Massachusetts,
which allows us to test and really prove
the technology itself.
Jenny Larios Berlin: Optimus Ride wants to provide a shared
electric and autonomous mobility.
We want make sure that folks
aren't being left behind.
People tend to have difficulty
connecting to transportation options
after a 10-minute walking distance.
Chin: So, what if you had, in a self-driving system
that connected you from where you are
to the subway, for example,
a fixed infrastructure like that.
You can have a fleet of vehicles
that can dynamically contract and expand
based on the real demand.
Osgood: Autonomous vehicles can potentially work better
as part of a network and consequently increase
the reliability of travel on our streets.
That is why the city of Boston is really actively engaged
in the testing of autonomous vehicles.
Larios Berlin: So, you're currently in Optimus City.
Optimus City is about 9,000 square feet of space,
which allows us to have our own private test track.
In Massachusetts, you can't actually
do driverless on the public road,
so this gives us an opportunity to do
as much driverless testing as we need to fully vet it
and get it ready for the real world.
Chin: So, we're in the Optimus Ride now,
and the vehicle is programmed to drive autonomously
throughout the entire Seaport of Boston.
We have John and Alfredo, our two test operators.
They're actually not driving at all.
They're monitoring the vehicle.
As we're starting to drive,
and we've been able to map
the entire environment around us.
We're also planning and looking at the trajectory
of all the other objects as well.
And over time, with more and more data,
we're able to then improve the entire
network at a very, very high level.
Osgood: One of the things that we are learning through
the process of having testing on city of Boston streets is
if there are design modifications
that we need to be making to city streets
to have them work for autonomous vehicles.
One of those things would be a digital atlas
of the curb rules of the city.
Potentially a digital layer a vehicle would have
so it knows where in the city of Boston
it could be able to go.
Chin: My view is that you can deploy
this technology in an existing city today
and, over time, that city will evolve.
I also believe that you can design a city today
with autonomous vehicles in mind,
and you would design it very differently
than a city that was pre-automobile
or even post-automobile.
It has the power to do both.
Everyone needs transportation;
everyone needs mobility.
There's a deep correlation between
your mobility and your wealth level too,
so if you're a wealthy person,
you can afford your own car,
you can afford your own private jet,
but if you don't have that,
then you're probably taking a bus for four hours.
Right? And that level of inequity
and the impact that has on not only the people's lives
but also the way you design cities?
That's a future that we have to kind of shape.