UK To Allow Driverless Cars By End of Year

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The day is coming when our friend and UK driving instructor Norman Rampart might lose his job as the UK government has announced that driverless cars will be allowed on public roads from January next year.

Google's self-drive car combines video and sensor data to determine where to steer
Google’s self-drive car combines video and sensor data to determine where to steer

From the BBC:

The Department for Transport had originally pledged to let self-driving cars be trialled on public roads by the end of 2014.

Business Secretary Vince Cable revealed the details of the new plan at a research facility belonging to Mira, an automotive engineering firm based in the Midlands.

“Today’s announcement will see driverless cars take to our streets in less than six months, putting us at the forefront of this transformational technology and opening up new opportunities for our economy and society,” he said.

UK engineers, including a group at the University of Oxford, have been experimenting with driverless cars. But, concerns about legal and insurance issues have so far restricted the machines to private roads.

Other countries have, however, been swifter to provide access to public routes.

The US States of California, Nevada and Florida have all approved tests of the vehicles. In California alone, Google’s driverless car has done more than 300,000 miles on the open road.

In 2013, Nissan carried out Japan’s first public road test of an autonomous vehicle on a highway.

And in Europe, the Swedish city of Gothenburg has given Volvo permission to test 100 driverless cars – although that trial is not scheduled to occur until 2017.

Competition cash

UK cities wanting to host one of the trials have until the start of October to declare their interest.

The tests are then intended to run for between 18 to 36 months.

A £10m fund has been created to cover their costs, with the sum to be divided between the three winners.

Meanwhile, civil servants have been given until the end of this year to publish a review of road regulations.

This will cover the need for self-drive vehicles to comply with safety and traffic laws, and involve changes to the Highway Code, which applies to England, Scotland and Wales.

Two area will be examined by the review: how the rules should apply to vehicles in which the driver can take back control at short notice, and how they should apply to vehicles in which there is no driver.

The label “driverless vehicle” actually covers a lot of different premises.

Indeed, the cruise control, automatic braking, anti-lane drift and self-parking functions already built into many vehicles offer a certain degree of autonomy.

But the term is generally used to refer to vehicles that take charge of steering, accelerating, indicating and braking during most if not all of a journey between two points, much in the same way aeroplanes can be set to autopilot.

 

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Stacey Gray
9 years ago

.

Stacey Gray
9 years ago

As a professional videographer I worked on a program about autonomous vehicles being developed by a well known technical engineering University – 20 years ago. At that time they had the base technology down pat. In fact their little fleet of autonomous vehicles had done a cross country trip essentially without human interference. In order to avoid creating a panic each vehicle was actually manned by a technician who at least occupied the front left seat. It was quite interesting, though somewhat unsettling to take a ride in a van being driven through a very busy city downtown by a computer.

While the infrastructure required for the vehicles to self fuel was not then or now in place, one of the interesting things was that the unit even knew when it needed fuel, would find and enter a fueling station and even knew which side the fuel filler was on.

Quick, which side is your fuel filler on? Are you sure? When was the last time you pulled up on the wrong side of the pump?

The autonomous road vehicle research was being sponsored by the military, obviously they have a need for man-less vehicles and weapon systems. Another item was an autonomous helicopter, they were developing one that could navigate varying obstacles (They used a miniature and flew it indoors, moving obstacles about the room as it flew.), but the most interesting was one that could sync to the heaving of the deck of a ship in heavy seas and then land safely on said rolling platform.

But the primary focus of the group’s founder was for agricultural equipment – farm tractors that could till fields and harvest crops, monotonous, manpower intensive activities that the machines could be trained to do by themselves. Just think about the tractors plowing, combines and corn pickers that circle our farm fields hours on end….

Pennyjane Hanson
9 years ago

or do we license the car itself? around here the driving gadget would have to be infused with a very sophisticated patience program in order to deal with Indiana’s bureau of motor vehicles.

“massacre at bmv as toyota goes postal”

James Smith
9 years ago

I suspect most people will prefer to drive themselves for the foreseeable future. When this finally comes to be generally available, it will be popular with those that have not availed themselves of Norman’s services.

wonder if it will allow those whose licenses have been revoked for any reason to use?

9 years ago

“Cop Pepper-sprays car for refusing to cooperate during traffic stop.”

Pennyjane Hanson
Reply to  BitcoDavid
9 years ago

(giggle) right under the “welcome to texas” sign!

Pennyjane Hanson
9 years ago

i hope these experiments in uk go better than they have here in Bloomington where we have been experimenting with “driverless cars” for quite some time. it hasn’t gone well.

maybe they have a new approach….instead of a brainless body behind the wheel they might be experimenting with a brained gadget. if that’s the case, i think they may be on to something.

i don’t worry for norman, he can always rent himself out to the ladies’ as an object of nurture….he’s got a way with that.

Glenn Geist
9 years ago

This is the way the world ends.

Seems industry is intent on taking all the fun and all the freedom out of life in the interest of safety and of letting incompetents and idiots have access to the roads. Before you know it, we’ll all be getting around in electric wheelchairs with seat belts and air bags and wearing helmets.

Smarter machines and stupider people — this is the way it all ends.

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