Vans Drive Themselves Across the World

bossanovalithium writes "Four driverless electric vans successfully ended a 13,000-kilometer test drive from Italy to China which mirrored the journey carried out by Marco Polo in the Middle Ages. The four vans, packed with navigation gear and other computer software, drove themselves across eastern Europe, Russia, Kazakhstan and the Gobi Desert without getting lost. They had been equipped with four solar-powered laser scanners and seven video cameras that work together to detect and avoid obstacles."

Very cool, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

... as cool as it sounds, the vans were mostly designed to form a "virtual train" after a human-driven vehicle, so it's not quite autonomous navigation just yet.

Hey at least something cool out of my home country for once!

Sponsor

[flyingkillerrobots]

For those of you who want to know who made the vans, it was sponsored by the European Research Council. The lead researcher works at the University of Parma, Italy. Why, oh why do the summaries lack useful information? Yes, I am new here.

Why all-electric vehicles aren't there yet

[Sonny Yatsen]

This last line caught my eye.

The vehicles ran at maximum speeds of 60 kilometres per hour and had to be recharged for eight hours after every two to three hours of driving.

I think Marco Polo probably made better time with camels. Still an impressive feat, though.

Re:Why all-electric vehicles aren't there yet

[cindyann]

answers.com says it took Polo four years to get to China -- even with getting stuck in Moscow traffic the vans win.

Re:Not more "safety features" please

[Eevee]

You don't ride taxicabs in Munich [queensu.ca]

Subsequent analysis of the rating scales showed that drivers of cabs with ABS made sharper turns in curves, were less accurate in their lane-holding behaviour, proceeded at a shorter forward sight distance, made more poorly adjusted merging manoeuvres and created more "traffic conflicts". This is a technical term for a situation in which one or more traffic participants have to take swift action to avoid a collision with another road user.[3] Finally, as compared with the non-ABS cabs, the ABS cabs were driven faster at one of the four measuring points along the route. All these differences were significant.