Affordable driverless cars within 10 years: Study

October 30, 2014 03:31 pm | Updated June 04, 2016 02:56 pm IST - Sydney

In this file photo provided by General Motors, a red icon displayed indicates a vehicle is ahead on the road and has stopped, indicated by the triangle.

In this file photo provided by General Motors, a red icon displayed indicates a vehicle is ahead on the road and has stopped, indicated by the triangle.

Driverless cars could become affordable to most people within 10 years, Australian researchers said on Thursday.

Curtin University associate professor Ba Tuong Vo said his team has developed an “autonomous car” that can drive in a straight line and sense what is around it, Xinhua reported.

“The next step is to give it a ‘brain’ or the computer systems which can tell how to react to what is around it and also what to do when an object comes in its path,” he told the Australian Financial Review.

According to their study, a dozen different sensors could be installed on the average car as the “eyes and ears” and an algorithm would process the large amount of data received.

“Our goal was to use affordable sensors, radars, lasers and computer technology that is already available on the market, so the car is more likely to be accessible for people, unlike the small number of driverless cars that currently exist costing hundreds of thousands of dollars each,” he said.

However, he said developing an affordable driverless car posed a challenge because it involved giving the car total control of all functions, unlike current driver-assist technology that focuses on one purpose, such as alerting the driver when the car drifts out of a lane.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.