Car Completes 99% of 3,400-Mile U.S. Road Trip in Autonomous Mode
April 3rd, 2015Via: AP:
An autonomous car’s recent 3,400-mile U.S. road trip proves there’s at least one thing computers do better than humans: Follow the speed limit.
Auto supplier Delphi Corp. fitted an Audi Q5 with radar, cameras and laser sensors to navigate the 15-state journey from San Francisco to New York, mostly traveling on highways. The car drove itself 99 percent of the time, Delphi said Thursday.
Along the way, the autonomous Audi never drove above the speed limit, even when everyone else did. As a result, other drivers subjected the car — and its human occupants — to “a few hateful gestures,” said Jeff Owens, Delphi’s chief technology officer Jeff Owens.
The person sitting in the car’s driver seat intervened once when traffic was weaving around in a construction zone, and again when the car didn’t want to move into a busy left lane to avoid police stopped on the right shoulder. The car also got a little skittish when it was next to semi-trailer trucks, edging over to avoid them. But for the most part, it easily navigated bridges, traffic circles and open highways, even in heavy rain, Owens said.
“We expected we would be in autonomous mode most of the time, but to be in it close to 99 percent of the time was a pleasant surprise,” Owens told The Associated Press Thursday. “The equipment was flawless.”
Delphi engineers collected nearly three terabytes of data — equivalent to 30 percent of all of the printed material in the Library of Congress — that they can use to further enhance autonomous driving systems.
