Monday, March 29, 2010

More driverless technology

The Stanford racing team shows off their Robocar. Also showing interviews with the engineering team.

Another driverless car video, but the RoboDriver spins out on the race track, it seemed a little drunk. The car evidently was from the North Carolina State racing team.

Peter Hollings says the driverless car will takeover the world and make us extinct. He also mentions:
In late 2007 General Motors announced that it was working towards a target date of 2018 for a driverless car that would be available to the public. The car, using GPS guidance and an array of sensing equipment, would be capable of completing long or short journeys involving all the challenges of today’s driving, including stop lights, stop signs and parking.

Government Motors will be late, the fully driverless car is here today, in the form of personal Rapid Transit, Robotaxi.

And a large scale testing of automated driving technology in Europe:
Vehicle manufacturers, automotive suppliers, institutes and other stakeholders have joined forces in a "smart drive" to test various intelligent in-vehicle systems across Europe, with the aim of making our road transport safer, more efficient, and more comfortable. The large-scale European Field Operational Test on Active Safety Systems (euroFOT) is a research project supported by European funds, involving 28 organisations.
BBC Reports that automatic platooning, "roadtrains" are being tested in Europe, with this tidbit:

Road trains that link vehicles together using wireless sensors could soon be on European roads.

An EU-financed research project is looking at inexpensive ways of getting vehicles to travel in a 'platoon' on Europe's motorways.

Each road train could include up to eight separate vehicles - cars, buses and trucks will be mixed in each one.

The EU hopes to cut fuel consumption, journey times and congestion by linking vehicles together.

Early work on the idea suggests that fuel consumption could be cut by 20% among those cars and trucks travelling behind the lead vehicle.

This stuff is pulling us out of today's Great Recession.

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