On the road to driverless cars.

Leading automakers, including certain European luxury brands, are working to  create a different driving experience. They seem to be taking an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary approach.

January 20, 2012. MTR -- Lasers, cameras, and other sensors are the most expensive part of autonomous driving systems. Some experimental self-driving cars are estimated to carry more than $200,000 worth of cameras and other gear. Those costs are also leading automakers toward a gradual approach that starts with sensor technologies and then extends capabilities to control driving tasks as well. 

Several automakers already sell cars with so-called adaptive cruise control that automatically applies the brakes during highway driving if traffic slows. Next, BMW plans to extend that idea in its upcoming i3 series of electric cars, whose traffic-jam feature will let the car accelerate, decelerate, and steer by itself at speeds of up to 25 miles per hour—as long as the driver leaves a hand on the wheel. 

Making cars and elements of road infrastructure easily detectable by simple sensors will solve the problem of the high costs mentioned above. For the car to become truly driverless, the road itself has to change.

tags: transportation, control, distribution, detection, infrastructure