Google isn’t alone in its plan to bring autonomous cars to roads near you. There is now at lest one other major player, with the National University of Defense Technology in China having built a self-driving project of its own.

Working with China’s First Auto Works, the university researchers took a Hongqi HQ3 sedan and fitted it with cameras, sensors, and a computer that enabled the vehicle to start, navigate and stop its way through a 154-mile trek without the help of a driver. Oddly enough, the technology doesn’t utilize GPS to figure out where it is or where’s it going but rather uses the cameras and sensors to obey speed limits, watch traffic and make lane changes. We’re still a little confused as to how the car knew where to go, or how to get there – or if they just simply put it on a busy freeway to go straight without incident.

The technology isn’t very advanced, however, as this autonomous vehicle can’t “see” at night and hasn’t quite logged the same number of miles Google has on their Prius models. But clearly when there’s a will, there’s a way and it’ll be interesting to see who else throws their name into the ring in battle autonomous car.

[Source: Cartech Blog]

A state made famous on for its loose laws and even looser morality, you can now add another item to the list of things you’re allowed to do in Nevada: ride along in a driverless car.

Thanks to the passing of Bill No. 511, Nevada is the first state to allow Google’s autonomous cars. The vehicles aren’t permitted to operate on Nevada state streets yet, however, as the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles first must draw up the exact rules governing the cars.

The vehicles, which currently total a dozen Toyota Priuses and one Audi TT use laser range  finders and video camera, as well as maps to guide their way. Driver’s just have to input a destination using a GPS system and the car will find its own way there.

Google has been lobbying the Nevada state legislature, claiming the vehicles will pollute less and cause fewer collisions (not to mention injuries and deaths) than vehicles operated by humans.

With the bill passed, Google is also lobbying to push through an amendment to current texting while driving laws, that would allow texting for those behind the wheel of a driverless car.

The change in the law in Nevada may also benefit Volkswagen, which recently showed-off a new Temporary Auto Pilot technology, that it claims is nearly production ready.

[Source: DailyMail]

Years from now you’ll remember reading this article. It will be the first time you ever heard about Volkswagen‘s new Temporary Auto Pilot, a technology that lets a car essentially drive by itself.

Science fiction? Hardly, VW claims its far closer to rolling this auto pilot option in production models that you’d expect.

Anyone who’s been paying any attention to the development of autonomous cars will likely have heard of Google’s driverless ones. While those vehicles are a somewhat distant reality, cars using Volkswagen’s TAP system could be on the road soon, thanks to the use of technology already in place in production cars. In a statement released following the debut of the system, Volkswagen claims that, “TAP is based on a relatively production-like sensor platform, consisting of production-level radar-, camera-, and ultrasonic-based sensors supplemented by a laser scanner and an electronic horizon.”

Revealed at the HAVEit (Highly Automated Vehicles for Intelligent Transport) conference in Boras, Sweden, VW research director Dr. Jürgen Leohold described it as “An important milestone on the path towards fully automatic and accident-free driving.”

The Temporary Auto Pilot function, which can be switched on or off by the driver, will allow what VW calls “semi-automatic” driving at speeds of up to 130 km/h, or roughly 86 mph. It bundles features like adaptive cruise control, and a lane assist system allowing the vehicle to stay centered in a lane and maintain a constant distance from the vehicle ahead. Added innovations include the ability to reduce speed in a corner, as well as the ability to recognize speed limits.

Scary? Perhaps. But according to Volvo’s Senior Safety Engineer Thomas Broberg, the idea of a car train, where a lead vehicle sets the pace and speed and other cars communicate with it from behind will be a reality, at least on European roads by the end of the decade.

Broberg says that closed circuit tests have already proved successful with two cars working together in a car train format; Volvo says field trials are set to be conducted in Sweden later this year.

“Car trains allow a driver to use their time better, drive safer, reduce congestion and improve the environment,” the engineer said. “You’re always following another car, so why not let the driving be done by someone else?”

Broberg also believes that car trains are  a further step towards fully autonomous cars but recognizes from a technical point of view, the concept is tremendously challenging, not mention legally and socially hard to swallow for most.

Yet Volvo is taking radical steps, setting a lofty goal of nobody dying in any of its cars by 2020, but says it “needs to understand the mechanisms about how people think,”  in order to get there.

Broberg also believes that if Volvo could understand how people think in the seconds before an accident, it could potentially change accident situations from critical to non critical.

With more ambitious sales targets now in the works for Volvo, following its purchase by Chinese automaker Geely, the company has the potential to acquire more crash safety data from more of its cars in a shorter time period, speeding up research and development on future safety programs.

[Source: Autocar]

After secretly testing a fleet of autonomous cars in California, Google is now looking to shift driverless ‘driving’ into gear in Nevada, lobbying state officials to allow the vehicle to be legally driven on public roads.

To achieve their goal, and the dream of the projects creator and former Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun, Google has hired LAs Vegas lobbyist David Goldwater to alter existing Nevada state laws. Two key changes need to be made, the first would be a bill allowing for the licensing and testing of autonomous cars, while a second would then deal with issues of distracted driving, essentially allowing for the ‘driver’ of the car to text while driving as he or she really wouldn’t be in control of the vehicle anyway.

Thrun has been a vocal proponent of autonomous cars, claiming they would cut down on pollution and drastically reduce the number of road fatalities caused by human error.

Currently Google’s fleet of driverless cars totals seven and includes six Toyota Prius hybrids and one Audi TT. The cars are distinguishable by a large laser range finder on the roof, with other camera and radar sensors on the front and sides of the car.

[Source: NYTimes]

When the robot uprising comes, Sebastian Thrun will be accused of sympathizing with the androids. The Google engineer and leader of its driverless car project believes that by replacing the follies and foibles of human driving, its computer-controlled cars could save a million lives every year.

Apocalypse jokes aside, Thrun, a professor of computer science at Stanford University, became dedicated to the concept of saving lives when he lost his best friend to a car accident when he was 18. He discussed the implications that driverless cars could have at TED Talks, the conference for new ideas. In addition to saving lives, Thrun said, transport would be far quicker and more efficient, with less fuel wasted and a complete elimination of traffic jams. Humans in the future “will look back at us and say how ridiculous it was that humans were driving cars.”

Google’s automated cars have so far covered 140,000 miles in a variety of driving conditions, with nary an accident. Click the jump to see a Toyota Prius navigate the mean streets of Anytown, USA, and just imagine how much more time we can spend texting on our cell phones once the robots take over our daily commute. I for one welcome our new robot overlords!

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We all drool over the latest technologies, wait in line to buy them and show them off to our less fortunate friends. But a recent study shows that while we love them, we’re also frustrated when they crash and freeze. The study goes on to say that even though we’re frustrated, 49 percent of us would love to let a driverless car chauffeur us around.

According to a new Accenture survey that polled 2,000 British and American consumers, people are most interested in gadgets that do stuff automatically. These include smartphones, GPS systems, home appliances and vehicles. And if they’ll make your life easier, you’re willing to pay more for it.

Even though the survey largely concentrated its efforts in the electronics department and what people want in future models, it just goes to show you that people are really warming up to the idea of autonomous cars to get them around. But even though we’re more open to the idea, do you think the world is ready for the driverless car? We know that Google had pretty good results from their autonomous vehicle, but is the general public ready for this technology? Let us know in the comment section below.

We’ve also included the rest of the press release after the jump, so feel free to give it a read.

[Source: Translogic]