Driverless Cars a Reality by 2030?

"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."

Nic Fleming/TN (Feb. 21st, 2007)

A report in The Telegraph UK says driverless cars that can predict the actions of other vehicles and negotiate busy city traffic will be commonplace by 2030...and they'll be far safer too. (Photo: Driverless Car "Stanley"–developed at Stanford University—CNET News)

The report noted that, at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in San Francisco, designers unveiled "Junior," a "modified blue VW Passat that will enter a £1 million contest later this year to navigate its way autonomously through a simulated urban environment including other robot vehicles and traffic laws."

Prof Sebastian Thrun, one of the car's designers, is quoted as saying, "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."

The prototype reportedly "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 150 ft., six video cameras, bumper-mounted lasers, global positioning receivers and movement sensors. Junior's computer reads maps and chooses routes from information collected from the car's instruments 200 times per second."

Source: The Telegraph UK

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