Semi-Autonomous Vans Traveling From Italy To China
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Thursday, 22 of July , 2010 at 1:10 am
A pair of robotic vehicles from Vislab (artificial vision and intelligent systems lab at the University of Parma) departed Parma, Italy on Tuesday for Shanghai, China. The 100% electric vans will travel 8,000 miles over three months, enduring (hopefully) all kinds of extremes ranging from the downtown Moscow to the Gobi desert, which I’m pretty sure is full of dinosaurs or something.
Now, I’m calling these vans semi-autonomous because they’re autonomously following a vehicle that’s being driven by a human. Not that this is an easy task, of course… The vans have been kitted out with the same sort of obstacle detection and avoidance tech as the DARPA Grand and Urban challenge vehicles.
At this point, this technology is targeted mostly at goods transport as opposed to letting you take a nap while your car drives you somewhere. Some people, though, don’t really get why this sort of thing is useful or important:
“It begs the question why. In Australia, you have big trucks with three or four trailers attached in the desert. Why do you need an autonomous vehicle if you can connect them with a piece of steel?” said Andrew Close, an analyst at IHS Automotive.
Well, there’s a reason why that type of thing works in Australia and nowhere else: in Australia, you have a bajillion miles of long, flat, empty road. Most states in the US, on the other hand, limit connected trailers to two. Giving autonomy (or optional semi-autonomy) to vehicles means that you can have as many trailers as is reasonable or convenient. And really, it’s the optional semi-autonomy that’s the most realistically valuable in the short term, as we’ve discussed before. Think about it: on the highway, you spend a LOT of time doing nothing except following the guy in front of you, slowing down when he does and not going outside the lines. It’s pretty robotic, right? Right? Yeah. And pretty soon, your car will be better than you are at avoiding the unexpected. Autonomous driving: it saves time, it saves money, and it will most likely save lives.
Comments (4)
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Comment by Farle
Made Thursday, 29 of July , 2010 at 6:57 pm
I actually had a thought about the whole ‘America has a limited connecting trailers’ thing.
The way I figure it, whilst it isn’t physically connected to the trailer ahead of it, it is still part of the truck, so still falls under the same guidelines.
Also, could you imagine the fallout if one of these semi-AI trailers decides to stop following its master and ploughs into anything? It would effectively kill any chance of any Autonomous features to any vehicle in the US, for fears that the maker would be sued into oblivion.
I’m all for automation, its faster and safer than humans driving on the highway, but I’d rather the Smart car infront of me was driven by an autonomous system first, rather than a hulking tower of steel and pseudo-brains first.
Comment by Mike @ Stock Picks
Made Sunday, 15 of August , 2010 at 11:07 am
Collaborating with a team from Stanford University, the ERL competed in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge with a modified Volkswagen Passat named “Junior.”
The contest required the competing cars to drive 60 miles without a driver on closed off suburban streets, in under 6 hours. The cars had to cross intersections, merge with moving traffic, park themselves and obey stop signs.
Comment by computer denver
Made Monday, 21 of November , 2011 at 10:26 pm
Wow, I enjoyed your neat post.
Comment by selling managed services
Made Monday, 5 of December , 2011 at 8:16 pm
An impressive share, I just given this onto a colleague who was doing a bit of similar evaluation on this. He actually bought me breakfast because I found it for him.. smile.
