Wednesday, October 5, 2011

A Quick Explanation

Automated driving is when you get into the car, tell it where to go, and the car drives you there without any other input from you.

What I want to see is a fully implemented automated driving system in Canada within the next twenty years, with the first automated driving only highways opening in the next ten years.

For those of you who think that ten years is too fast, I point out that there have already been two large scale tests of driver-less cars that I am aware of.  Google has been working on automated driving in California, and has already logged over 225,000 km (140,000 miles).  The second is a trip from Italy to Shanghai, China.  That test involved two electrically powered vehicles.  The team running the test was headed by Alberto Broggi from the University of Parma.

What is lacking is a political will to implement driver-less systems on public roads.  The technical ability is not.  In future posts I will outline what I believe are the necessary conditions to implement an automated driving system, and the impacts that such a system could have on society, economics, the environment, and vehicle design.