Mobility companies Uber and Lumo are planning to deploy Mercedes-Benz S-Class-based robotaxis across the United States, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Mercedes-Benz has revealed plans to accelerate development of a robotaxi ecosystem built around the new S-Class, working with technology partners including Nvidia and Momenta.
Mobility providers Uber and Lumo are expected to operate the vehicles across several global regions. According to the automaker, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class has been engineered with built-in redundancies for steering, braking, computing systems, and power supply to support fail-safe operation.
Its MB.OS operating system will act as the core platform for driverless shuttle services in America, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Nvidia will contribute its Drive Hyperion architecture along with Drive AV Level 4 software to the ecosystem being jointly developed with Mercedes-Benz and Uber. Separately, Mercedes-Benz and Momenta announced a Level 4 autonomous driving project late last year aimed at creating a robotaxi experience based on the S-Class.
As part of that initiative, mobility provider Lumo, a subsidiary of technology firm K2, plans to initially operate the autonomous shuttles in Abu Dhabi. The first S-Class robotaxi test vehicles are scheduled to begin operating on Abu Dhabi roads later this year.
Commenting on the announcement, Jörg Burzer, Member of the Board of Management of Mercedes-Benz Group AG and Chief Technology Officer responsible for Development and Procurement, said: “The next step on our roadmap is to enable a robotaxi experience based on the new S-Class.
To accomplish our goal, we have strong industry-leading partners at our side. For us, these partnerships mark the beginning of our entry into the robotaxi market with the S-Class and MB.OS as the ultimate platform.”
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