“If you can reduce the barrier for transportation and improve the rider experience, then you can draw people into public transit. And if you can get people to start sharing vehicles and maybe to not own their own car, you can really transform the cities around us.” This is the mission that powers May Mobility, an Ann Arbor-based startup seeking to transform cities through fleets of autonomous shuttles. To achieve this goal, May Mobility partners with cities and municipalities to develop, implement, and operate fleets of autonomous shuttles. Currently, May Mobility operates eight unique fleets in the US and Japan, and has moved over 300,000 riders worldwide.
One such operation is here in the University of Michigan’s backyard. May Mobility has partnered with MCity and SPARK to develop A2Go, an autonomous shuttle service consisting of five autonomous, shared on-demand vehicles operating in a 2.64 square-mile area in Downtown Ann Arbor. A2Go was launched in October 2021 and consists of 18 designated stops that can be hailed via app. Unlike other autonomous vehicle technologies, May Mobility’s autonomous driving system, Multi-Policy Decision Making, is not purely rule-based but instead allows for more flexible decision making. For instance in Ann Arbor, May found that many college students “don’t really yield to let cars go through crosswalks”, breaking the behavioral expectations of most traditional AV systems. Olson explains, “We use a simulator on the vehicle, running about 30,000 times faster than real time, to build a mirror copy of the world online in the car.” This unique technology allows the system to continuously survey and assess the vehicle’s environment, and simulate the outcomes of thousands of possible decisions in order to decide what to do. This system “gives the car an imagination and lets it work out on its own what decision makes sense given the context,” says Olson. Currently, May Mobility shuttles are Level 4 autonomous vehicles, meaning that they are backed by a human ‘safety driver’ to take over when needed.
With this technology, May Mobility is well on its way to making quality public transportation. Olson contrasts May’s goals and accomplishments with the ‘hares’ of autonomous vehicles like Tesla, saying “People get excited about the story the hare is telling. But at the end of the day, we’re here literally to transform cities, to make cities work better and to provide access with equity.” May seeks to accomplish this goal by working directly with cities trying to solve transportation challenges by understanding individual cities’ needs, developing optimal routes for public transit, and delivering value for the right stakeholders.