(moderate chiming music) - People often ask when are we going to see these self-driving vehicles turned loose into the real world.

The answer to that one is, 1931, the first self-driving elevator.

- [Announcer] The complete automatic elevator system.

All the passengers do is push the buttons indicating their stops and the cars do the rest automatically.

- [Katie] Okay, so we've come pretty far since New York's first elevator, but how close are we to a self-driving world?

Professor Tyler Folsom and his students at the University of Washington Bothell are working on technology to develop self-driving bikes.

- As we move, it's going to tell us how we are supposed to move.

- I'm Katie Herzog.

Today on Re-Inventors, we're taking a test drive to see what our roads could look like in the future.

- Did it turn?

- No, I can't do it.

(soft ratcheting) - Google did a April Fools thing on self-driving bikes and it's a joke to most people, and we're serious about it.

We think that you can get around town on a bicycle-class vehicle as well as you can on a car-type vehicle.

We've had about 50 students working on this the last several years.

(bicycle bell ringing) - Okay, so I get in and I squeeze the handlebar and then it's gonna turn me?

- [Student] Yes, so it's gonna turn you right, and then it's gonna turn you left.

- Okay.

(moderate music) - So to operate the vehicle, you have your parking brake on this right side.

- [Katie] All right, parking brake.

- You have the throttle.

You press down to give it power.

(clicking) And then you have your brake on the left side.

This way.

- Whoa!

- Yeah.

- Here we go.

- Yeah, so just try to keep it at a, probably like one mile per hour.

And then squeeze the right real hard.

- Woo!

(upbeat music) - [Tyler] A vehicle like this uses 30 times less energy than a car, which means that you can run this off any source of energy, electric, gas, or whatever, but you use a whole lot less energy to get the same effect.

- What are the positives for this technology in terms of the world?

- The big positive that people latch onto is safety.

A motorcycle becomes just about as safe as an SUV if there aren't many accidents, and a lot of the traffic accidents that we're seeing are not the drivers.

They're the pedestrians, they're the motorcycles, they're the bicycles, and with automation, it opens up a lot more possibilities with transportation.

- Yeah, I love the idea of everybody having these instead of these big, dangerous vehicles, but I wonder, what are we gonna do with all of our cars when we're all in here?

Just dump them at the bottom of the ocean?

Oh, we could send them to Mars.

- [Tyler] Cars have a limited lifetime anyway.

I mean, after five, ten years, your car is going to be in the junkyard anyway, and it's going to take about that much time for this technology to take hold, so it's kind of your normal recirculation for wherever your car is going to get dumped.

People who are really car aficionados can go drive the way people still use horses.

- [Katie] And the rest of us can take a nap in the back of the car.

- Exactly.

(soft upbeat music) (electronic horn honking) (bell ringing and horn honking) - [Katie] This program is made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.