Skip to main content

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

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Constitution Must Treat All Religions Equally

A Commentary by Pete Ondeng and Peter Waiyaki The public discourse on whether or not the Kadhi Courts should be included in the constitution has been wrongly interpreted by many to be a Christian vs Muslim affair. The often uninformed rhetoric by hard liners on both sides of the argument adds an unnecessary and potentially explosive element to the already charged political atmosphere. The issue here is not about religion, but about the constitution. The move to change the current constitution springs from an acknowledgement by most people that there are wrongs in the document that need to be made right. There are some basic rights, for instance, that the original constitution did not address, and which need to be enshrined in the new document. Similarly, there were some provisions that were included by those who negotiated the Lancaster House document that no longer hold water and need to be scrapped. The Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) retreat in Naivasha, which was expected by m...
Post a Comment
Read more

President Obama says He Prays "all the time now"

Aimee Herd (July 29, 2009) "This is something where you just hope that you are aligning your work with His purposes, and that you're attuned to the needs of the people you're there to serve." In a recent Nightline interview, President Obama told ABC News' Terry Moran that his prayer habits have intensified since taking office, and that he prays "all the time now." "I've got a lot of stuff on my plate and I need guidance all the time," Obama said in the interview. He told Moran that before he was elected, he used to pray each night. Obama reportedly receives a devotional and prayer sent to his BlackBerry every morning from Pastor Joshua DuBois, the director of the president's Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships Initiative. (Photo: LATimes) Obama candidly added, "I think that every president who's had [this job] is constantly humbled by the degree to which there are a lot of issues out there and the notion that one perso...
Post a Comment
Read more