Oxford University Researchers Develop Self Driving Car

 Robotic Cars  

The Guardian is reporting that researchers at Oxford University have developed a self-driving car that can cope with snow, rain and other weather conditions. The system can be fitted to existing cars and could one day cost just $150.

The Guardian is reporting that researchers at Oxford University have developed a self-driving car that can cope with snow, rain and other weather conditions. The system can be fitted to existing cars and could one day cost just £100 (US$150).

The new system developed by a team led by professor Paul Newman has been installed in a Nissan Leaf electric car and tested on private roads around the university. It will stop for pedestrians, and could take over the boring parts of driving such as negotiating the traffic on your everyday commute to the office.

The system has been demonstrated on public roads — and as long as there is a licensed driver in the driver’s seat, “there’s no obvious legal barrier to using it on roads now,”  Newman told the Guardian. “It’s essentially an advanced driver assistance system.”

Newman thinks that it could be only 15 years before self-driving systems become commonplace in cities as the price of installing the systems drops: “At present it costs about £5,000, but we’re working to reduce that to £100,” he said.

Rather than using the GPS navigation system, which can be unreliable in cities where “urban canyons” caused by buildings block signals, and only accurate to a few meters, the British-developed system uses 3D laser scanning linked to computer storage to build up a map of its surroundings, which is accurate to a few centimeters.

The auto-drive system works by recognizing where it is, based on a laser scanner on the front of the car, comparing its surroundings to its stored data. That’s different from Google’s system, which uses a combination of GPS, laser guidance — from a roof-mounted laser — and mapping to determine its location and route. This process is known as Simultaneous Location And Mapping (SLAM).

The computational power required to navigate is already cheaply available, as is the storage for the 3D maps that the car would use to figure out its location. "Our cities don't change very much, so robotic vehicles will see familiar structures and say 'I know this route - want me to drive?'" states Newman.

The Oxford system, developed through funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, could be extended so that each car downloads data from passing cars, or over the internet via 3G and 4G connections to a central system.

SOURCE  The Guardian

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