Documenting the Coming Singularity

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Driverless cars on the road by 2020

NewScientist - 3.6.10 (by Nic Fleming)

Laid-back driving (Image: Jeffrey Sylvester/Taxi/Getty).

WITH his jeans, white trainers and stripy top, Bob is every inch the well-dressed 6-year-old. He's standing in the middle of a hotel car park and, scarily, I'm driving straight at him. Instead of hitting the brakes, I put my foot down on the accelerator. With just 10 metres to go, a row of red lights flashes across my windscreen and there's an urgent, high-pitched beeping sound. An instant later, I am jerked forward as the brakes slam on automatically and the car screeches to a halt just short of Bob's stomach.
"I see the potential for launching fully autonomous vehicles by 2020."
This is what Bob is for. The child-sized dummy has just helped me test the first in-car system that can sense an imminent collision with pedestrians and brake automatically if the driver doesn't. It is being put through final trials before being launched in May by Swedish car maker Volvo in its new S60 model.

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