Estonia based delivery technology company Cleveron has partnered with LRK Driving School to do what the company claims is the first driving exams for unmanned semi-autonomous cars.
Cleveron’s exams were done using the Cleveron 701 semi-autonomous delivery robot. All four of those tested passed the exam and have received the world’s first ‘teleoperated vehicle’ certificates.
Before the exams the Cleveron staff had to undertake specially designed teleoperated vehicle training, as well as field exercises and city driving. Given 15 minutes for each of the six field exercises, Cleveron say that the participants completed the tasks in under five minutes each.
“The first four drivers who obtained the teleoperated vehicle driver certificate performed field exercise and city driving without errors,” commented Taavi Purtsak, testing process specialist, Cleveron. “Here at Cleveron, we can now be certain that it is indeed possible to drive an unmanned vehicle in the same way as a conventional car, and we are on the right track with the development of our vehicles.”
“I have also passed the teleoperated vehicle Cleveron 701 training myself to understand the differences between driving a teleoperated and conventional vehicle, where the driver is actually in the driver’s seat,” explained Jaan Kleemann, a specialist at LRK Driving School. “Based on my experience, I can say that Cleveron’s engineers have done an excellent job of developing a driverless vehicle that allows driving remotely as safe as driving a traditional car. In addition, the examinees were very well prepared – it only took them about five to six minutes to complete the field exercises, and they did all of them on the first attempt.”
The Cleveron 701 semi-autonomous delivery vehicle is supervised remotely and can operate in low traffic areas to deliver goods within a 15-30 minute radius of the dispatch location. It can be adapted to suit the needs of the client using them – for instance with a chilled or frozen compartment for groceries or a parcels section.
