Driverless cars hit New York streets

By: Drivers.com staff
Date: 2009-01-18

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Back in November the city of New York closed a five-block section of 11th Avenue in Manhattan to allow the demonstration of the "autonomous vehicle."

A $420,000 version of a Ford SUV equipped with laser 'vision', a highly sophisticated GPS device (cost about $40,000), and two very powerful computer systems, showed that it could maneuver around obstacles, do lane changes, make U-turns, and park itself.

The vehicle was part of a DARPA project and was being demonstrated as part of the 15th Congress on Intelligent Transportation Systems being held at the Jacob Javits Convention Center. DARPA is the acronym for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (noted as an early developer of the Internet), and the Ford SUV was one of two vehicles DARPA had on show.

The vehicles won’t be in common use anytime soon but the spinoffs from the research and development will be used in all kinds of developments to aid traffic. Already, many vehicles have some of the technologies the driverless vehicle will rely on, for example, the exchange of information between vehicles and the traffic environment (such as warnings about obstacles ahead or traffic lights) and exchange of information between vehicles and drivers.

Semi-automated vehicles that travel in driverless convoys are more realistic and have been tested numerous times.

Drivers won't be obsolete anytime soon but the enormous benefits deriving from these technologies will drive further research. The benefits will include reduced traffic congestion, fuel savings, crash reduction, and also time freed from the more boring aspects of driving.

Surveys are indicating that young drivers especially are more likely to want to spend driving time texting their friends or surfing the web rather than steering and watching traffic lights.

YouTube video of DARPA demo in NY, November 2008

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