G42 starts driverless taxi service trials in Abu Dhabi

G42 starting robotaxi trial on Abu Dhabi's Yas Island

News broke this week that Abu Dhabi-based AI and cloud computing company Group 42 (G42) was ready to begin a driverless transport services trial on the capital's tourism and leisure destination, Yas Island. It will be the biggest autonomous vehicle trial to take place in the UAE to-date.

The group announced in March of this year that it would be running a autonomous transport service in Q4 2021 in partnership with The Department of Municipalities and Transport in Abu Dhabi. On Sunday, Bloomberg confirmed that the trial would begin this month and G42 unveiled it's first robotaxi model - 'TXAI' - on Tuesday at the Abu Dhabi Smart City Summit.

The Level 4 Autonomous Driving trial will be run by G42 subsidiary Bayanat (Bayanat for Mapping & Surveying Services LLC), which it acquired in early 2020. The trial will use five vehicles and will serve nine locations on Yas Island, including hotels, restaurants and shopping malls. All vehicles will have a safety driver during the trial.

It's not much of a stretch of the imagination to believe that the Yas Island trial will be an operational success, given that it's being run in a relatively contained tourism area. It could be more of a challenge when the second phase is rolled out, which will involve at AV fleet of at least 10 vehicles serving multiple locations across Abu Dhabi

Find out more about the Yas Island robotaxi trial:

• Check out my Linkedin post.

• Read this story from The National.

• Read G42's news release.

• And here's the Department of Municipalities and Transport press release on the new 'TXAIs'.