Hong Kong taxi fleet, HKU roll out city's first AI-powered dispatch system
The 'Smart Dispatch Decision System' processes large volumes of real-time data such as road traffic status, weather and battery levels of electric cabs to assign orders, according to taxi fleet SynCab and the Smart Mobility Lab of the university's faculty of engineering.
Drivers who opted to take bookings from the AI-powered dispatch system would be given orders without an option to reject them, which could help shorten the match time, Sonia Cheng Man-yee, founder and executive director of SynCab, said on Monday.
'This could help our vehicles to be more efficient, as well as help enhance service quality and order acceptance rates,' she said. 'Drivers also have to learn to trust the system that the orders given to them will be the best.'
She said the system had a soft launch in January and before a full roll-out on July 14 as it gathered more data, highlighting that orders placed and taken last month both doubled those of June.
SynCab currently operates some 160 vehicles, all of which are equipped with the system. Cheng added that her fleet would be bolstered by up to 425 taxis in the future that also use the system, but stopped short of revealing a timeline.
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