Photo: This car drives itself. The passengers are being chauffeured by computer. Seen at the VAIL autonomous driving and parking demonstration at Stanford this weekend. The roof is festooned with spinning LIDAR and cameras, feeding into the server farm in the trunk. With more processing power, I’m guessing that the expensive laser rangefinders will be less essential as the 2D video cameras alone can render a 3D map of the world, much like our brain. The next generation may wonder why we wasted 80% of the carrying capacity of our highways, why truckers fell asleep, or what all the fuss was about parallel parking. CREDIT Steve Jurvetson SOURCE and DESCRIPTION above: Wikipedia. ( Public Domain)
From Science Daily
Jan. 28, 2013 — Autonomous, driverless vehicles look set to hit the streets in the near future and become increasingly common, so UK researchers have investigated algorithms that could help developers include escape manoeuvres to allow such vehicles to quickly and safely switch lanes to avoid collisions with other road users.
Writing in the aptly namedInternational Journal of Vehicle Autonomous Systems, Matthew Best of the Department of Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering at Loughborough University, in Leicestershire, discusses the optimisation of a vehicle’s standard brake, acceleration and steering control inputs in the context of avoiding collisions. . . . Read Complete Report