As self-driving cars accelerate towards reality, we explore some of the key questions surrounding the future of automated transport. We find out that city-dwellers could soon be transported around the streets in automated pods, whereas those that live in the country will depend more and more on their car to perform routine tasks such as parking and cruising on the motorway.
We talk to the researchers who are designing ways for automated cars to talk to each other so they can switch lanes, cross junctions and organise into platoons without the help of humans.
We also explore how the EU is teaming up with the US and Japan to share ideas and make self-driving cars a global reality, and how one of the next big challenges is to come up with a set of rules and regulations before self-driving systems can be introduced.
Picture yourself speeding down the highway with no hands on the wheel, checking your emails while your car takes care of responding to what’s happening on the road. Would you trust your car to make the right decision? If you have doubts, you’re not alone.
Computers are being taught to understand the meaning behind words and images on the internet, and it’s bringing online a new generation of intelligent software that can perform tasks that only humans were able to do up to now.
High‐level talks between the EU and the US are critical if we are to have self‐driving cars any time soon, carmakers, lawyers, and researchers agree.
Driverless cars may sound like something out of a sci-fi movie, but according to Dr Jean-Luc Di Paola-Galloni, co-chairman of the European Road Transport Advisory Council (ERTRAC), they could be on our roads in just four years’ time, and so the EU needs to regulate that.
Bumper to bumper again. But imagine instead of staring at the car ahead, you ask your car to take over, turning your attention to a game, a book, or even a nap.