Qibus Remote Driving Demo
In addition to autonomous driving, a number of start-ups are working on remote-controlled driving. One of these is Qibus, which was founded in 2019 and is based in the San Francisco Bay Area. After a serious motorcycle accident and a year of rehabilitation, during which he had to learn to walk again, the Belarusian founder Leanid Tsurankou had the not entirely selfless idea of developing the technology that allows a driver to take control of a vehicle from an office via a teleconnection.
An app can be used to order a vehicle and specify a destination, and a driver remotely brings the vehicle to the customer and drives the vehicle with the passengers to the destination. However, a passenger in the driver’s seat can also intervene at any time and take control.
Qibus founder and CEO Leanid Tsurankou gave us a demo ride in a Qibus remote controlled vehicles on Sausalito. The ride took place on January 17th, 2024 at around 3pm PST. This is the full video.
The applications are manifold. Here is an (incomplete) list:
Rental car companies can bring the vehicles to the renters;
Trucks can be controlled remotely by truck drivers and handed over to the next driver at the end of the shift. This also saves downtime caused by driver breaks. It also makes the truck driving job one where you are not far away from your family, but go home as normal after work;
On industrial sites, one driver can control several vehicles and move and load containers, for example;
Providers of robotaxi fleets can use it to take over control in special situations and maneuver the vehicle out;
Vehicle owners can request a remote driver in certain situations if they are overtired, tipsy, ill or simply do not want to drive themselves;
In vehicle production, vehicles can be taken remotely from the end of the production line to the delivery parking lots, loaded onto trucks, wagons or ships, instead of drivers having to physically walk between these locations themselves;
Controlling delivery robots;
Parking space management;
…
KREATIVE INTELLIGENZ
Über ChatGPT hat man viel gelesen in der letzten Zeit: die künstliche Intelligenz, die ganze Bücher schreiben kann und der bereits jetzt unterstellt wird, Legionen von Autoren, Textern und Übersetzern arbeitslos zu machen. Und ChatGPT ist nicht allein, die KI-Familie wächst beständig. So malt DALL-E Bilder, Face Generator simuliert Gesichter und MusicLM komponiert Musik. Was erleben wir da? Das Ende der Zivilisation oder den Beginn von etwas völlig Neuem? Zukunftsforscher Dr. Mario Herger ordnet die neuesten Entwicklungen aus dem Silicon Valley ein und zeigt auf, welche teils bahnbrechenden Veränderungen unmittelbar vor der Tür stehen.
The connection to the vehicles is ensured via 5G, and latency itself is not a problem according to Tsurankou. Even driving on the highway (as seen in the video) is no problem. Incidentally, the driver in our demo was in Warsaw, Poland. The drivers themselves undergo training that prepares them for the local traffic regulations and peculiarities.
Qibus does not want to offer a remote driving service itself, but plans to sell the technology to manufacturers and operators, who can then install it in the cars and offer a remote driving service themselves. Qibus puts the target price for such a software-hardware kit at around 1,500 dollars per vehicle.
The company is currently raising another funding round.
This article was also published in German.
