Well looks like all of us taxi drivers will be out of a job by 2030, maybe they are right but don't you think it will all be a lonely soulless experience, a bit like a meal from a vending machine.
"Driverless cars that can predict the actions of other vehicles and negotiate busy city centre traffic will be commonplace by 2030.
US researchers believe cars equipped with the latest positioning technology and advanced artificial intelligence will be safer than those driven by humans within 25 years.
At the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science conference designers unveiled "Junior", a modified VW Passat that will enter a £1 million contest later this year to navigate its way through a simulated urban environment including other robot vehicles and traffic laws.
The prototype was created by the same team from Stanford University, California, that in 2005 won a prize of the same size for "Stanley", a vehicle that used sensors, lasers, cameras and on-board computers to navigate a 132-mile course through the Nevada desert.
Prof Sebastian Thrun, one of the car's designers, said: "Today we can drive about 100 miles before human assistance is necessary.
"By 2010 I expect this to go up to 1,000 miles, and by 2020 a million miles. By 2030 we should be able to deploy this technology on the open highway, and reliability will exceed that of humans by orders of magnitude."
Junior will have to be significantly more advanced that Stanley, as it will have to negotiate its way through roundabouts and one-way systems, respect rights of way and predict what other vehicles will do.
The race, to be held at an airfield in California owned by Nasa, the American space agency, on Nov 3, will involve having to cover 60 miles in six hours. The prototype has had its steering, throttle and brakes modified to be completely computer-controlled.
It has a spinning array of 64 lasers to provide it with 360 degree "vision" for a range of 150ft, six video cameras, bumper-mounted lasers, global positioning receivers and movement sensors.
Junior's computer reads maps and chooses routes from information collected fron the car's instruments 200 times per second.
3 comments:
Yeah yeah yeah...
And in the 1960s we were soon going to get cars that ran on a teaspoonful of atomic fuel that would outlast the car!
Rosie: Your right I don't think I will be worrying about it too much myself either, I will be long gone from behind the wheel of a cab before this comes about.
That's all very well but will it tell the passenger where the closest knock shop is or will it clean up a drunks vomit or carry the passengers luggage or have a chat with the lonely old bugger who only gets to talk to the cabbie????
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