According to the Kommersant newspaper, an experiment planned by the Russian government to test unmanned vehicles on public roads has not yet received the necessary funding.
Recall that according to the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 1415 (adopted in 2018), an experiment will be held in Moscow and Tatarstan, during which unmanned vehicles (with a driver in the cabin for safety reasons) will move in the general traffic flow.
Six companies will take part in the experiment, designed for three years (until March 1, 2022), including Yandex (100 unmanned vehicles based on Toyota Prius), Innopolis University (five cars based on Kia Soul), Aurora Robotics ( bus of our own design), KamAZ (three trucks), Moscow Road Institute (one vehicle based on Ford Focus), JSC Scientific Design Bureau of Computing Systems (two vehicles based on Kia Soul).
After the installation of automatic control systems, each car will be checked by NAMI for the correct operation of the standard car systems (ABS, steering, automatic transmission, etc.). According to Alexander Morozov, Deputy Head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, checking cars at NAMI at the rate of 214 thousand rubles. per unit will cost 40 million rubles. This amount may increase as more participants are added to the experiment. Morozov and Alexander Gurko, co-heads of the national technology initiative (NTI) Autonet, sent a letter to Deputy Prime Minister Maxim Akimov, who oversees the topic of NTI and the digital economy, with a request for financial support.
Alexander Morozov expressed confidence that funding from the NTI fund would be opened soon, and in May the first autonomous cars would appear on public roads.
A much larger amount (200 million rubles) will be required for another experiment - the passage of unmanned vehicles on federal highways. Money is needed to equip a section of the M11 Moscow-Petersburg highway with special sensors, but, according to Gurko, the source of funding has not yet been determined.
Source: 3dnews.ru