South Korean researchers are developing a self-driving taxi service

Autonomous vehicles and ride-sharing are two topics that are guaranteed to pop up whenever there’s a conversation about the automotive market and the transportation industry as a whole. The convergence of the two is an especially popular topic, and it’s believed by many that self-driving taxis will come to dominate the road in the decades to come. South Korea doesn’t want to wait that long, however, as some researchers from the Seoul National University have started testing an autonomous vehicle by the name of Snubber, which is a prototype of what could eventually become a standard taxi in the country.

It’ll be a while until we’ll be able to rent self-driving cars or hail driverless taxis, but it’s more than clear that the self-driving car is one of the most important themes at CES 2016. Many big players have already announced or are about to unveil smart car and self-driving car plans at the Las Vegas show, indicating that the self-driving car industry is poised to take off in the coming years. On top of what’s happening at CES, a new report also reveals that a driverless taxi program is already underway in Seoul, South Korea, and has been driving students in a campus for six months with absolutely no accidents. The car is called Snuber, a name that makes you think almost immediately about Uber. Seen in the image above, the Snuber has been navigating the 4,109 square meter campus with help of a cab-hailing app created by the Seoul National University. The sedan is easily distinguishable, as it has a turret on the roof that scans conditions on the road, Associated Press reports. Cameras, laser scanners and other sensors are placed on top of the vehicle to analyze the road and feed the information to the operating system that’s doing the driving. Even though it’s a driverless car, the Snuber has to have a person behind the wheel at all times who would be able to assume manual control of the vehicle in case of emergency.