Feature: Japan's plans for driverless taxis faces reality check from seasoned cabbies

Japan with its long history of automotive engineering and related pioneering technologies has for many auto insiders globally been the predominant go-to hub when it comes to exploring the ever-competitive and seemingly perpetual evolution of next-generation transportation technology.

The concept of autonomous or driverless cars is nothing new, but the reality of such cars hitting the roads in vast numbers is quickly becoming a realistic vision.

Honda Chairman Fumihiko Ike has noted that the industry is now under a great deal of pressure from the Japanese government to perfect self-driving systems as the government wants to showcase Japan's next-generation technology at the the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, by transporting athletes from the airport to the Olympic village in driverless vehicles.

And while Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said last week the government will make the necessary legal adjustments and prepare infrastructure for companies to provide self-driving transportation services in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, not all concerned parties are beaming with optimism about the potential arrival of such technology.

"I've been driving taxis in and around Tokyo all my life and the idea that jobs like mine may become obsolete if Japan starts the mass-production of self-driving cars is both unsettling and somewhat unbelievable," 59-year-old Shichiro Wada told Xinhua.

The veteran cab driver said that he found it hard to believe that when it came to driving and all the variables at play, that a robot could react in a superior way to a human, as not all decisions are objective and there is a degree of subjectivity or creativity involved in driving and reacting to situations that could be potentially dangerous.

"On the one hand I can see how driverless cars may be the future of cars in Japan and around the world, but taxi drivers like me who are highly-skilled at what we do, have very few accidents and can make right decisions couldn't be replicated by a robot or a computer. I've been driving so long that I intuitively know and can predict how a car in front or pedestrian on the sidewalk is going to act or react," Wada explained, adding that he could even anticipate when a child is away from its parent or dog or cat is suddenly going to bolt into the road.

"All of these scenarios have happened to me countless times, and because I'm a human with intuition and perception honed through years of experience, I can and have reacted intuitively and have definitely avoided fatal accidents in the past. I doubt that robot technology or Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are advanced enough to take over from human taxi drives," Wada concluded.

Similarly, Saitama-based taxi driver Goro Okamoto, 62, said that regardless of the potential for computer-based cars' systems to fail in the same way regular computers do, or Internet-connected vehicles to go offline as major servers crash or, more worryingly, are hacked by nefarious organizations, the customer service that taxi drivers provide, including small talk when the customer is in the mood, or recommending shops and restaurants due to local knowledge, cannot be replicated by a machine.

"The service we provide is a huge part of the job. We have to read the customer's body language and make decisions about conversations, the temperature inside the car, and even what speed to drive," the veteran cabbie explained. "All it would take is for a few driverless cars or taxis to be involved in serious accidents, be it the computers' fault or other regular drivers' faults and the whole industry could fail," he said.

"Perhaps the way forward is for automakers and tech companies here to focus their attention and resources on better radar-assisted vehicles, which provides warnings and can even slow a car if it's approaching another vehicle or obstacle too rapidly or closely, or goes off the road if a driver nods off," Okamoto concluded.

Both cabbies concurred that if driverless taxis start to threaten their livelihoods, there would certainly be a collective revolt of some kind, and they wouldn't simply sit back and accept being ousted from work by robots.

But one company seems on track to making sure that such technology moves from being science fiction to science fact.

Tokyo-based firm Robot Taxi will start live tests of its autonomous cabs in March 2016, its Chief Executive Hiroshi Nakajima confirmed this month, adding that the firm, which is a joint venture between mobile Internet pioneers DeNA and robotics firm ZMP, is aiming to add its robot-technology to existing vehicles, rather than building them from scratch, in a move that could be a game-changer as the immense production costs of autonomous vehicles are, for some companies, financially prohibitive.

While in the short-term eyeing Japan's rapidly aging population who may live in rural areas and find it hard to make short local trips and offering an autonomous, easy mobility solution, Nakajima is envisioning thousands of his driverless taxis being in service in Tokyo by 2020, stating that as the population continues to age, the number of taxi drivers will also dwindle.

Nakajima is also looking to attract new consumers by offering a cheaper service. "When you look at manned taxis, 70 percent of the cost is actually related to labor costs. If we can replace that part with artificial intelligence, I think we'll be able to provide a very attractive price point," he said.

But on hearing this news, Wada remained unfazed. "I think the majority of customers will still choose to be driven by a human, even if robot taxis do hit the roads. And regardless of whether or not robot cabs will be cheaper, people are happy to pay to be driven; yes it's hierarchical, but it's also about human interaction. Even if a customer doesn't want to chat, being in the presence of another human is an essential interaction in itself and this can't be replaced by a robot," Wada said. Enditem