Car of the future will not need a human driver

IT can talk, see, drive and no longer needs a human being to control it by remote.

The car of the future — completely computer-controlled — is on the streets of Berlin.

All summer, researchers from the city’s Free University have been testing the automobile around the German capital.

The vehicle manoeuvres through traffic on its own using a sophisticated combination of devices, including a computer, electronics and a precision satellite navigation system in the trunk, a camera in the front, and laser scanners on the roof and around the front and rear bumpers.

“The vehicle can recognise other cars on the road, pedestrians, buildings and trees up to 70 metres (yards) around it, and even see if the traffic lights ahead are red or green and react accordingly,” Raul Rojas, the head of the university’s research group for artificial intelligence, told reporters at a presentation.

“In fact, the car’s recognition and reaction to its environment is much faster than a human being’s reaction.”

The scientists have worked on their research car, a Volkswagen Passat worth €400,000 with lots of built-in special technology, for four years.

Several other groups have also been working on such technology recently, notably Google, which has been testing a robotic Toyota Prius in Nevada.

“There’s a big trend for completely computer-controlled cars — many companies and research centres in several countries are working on it and it is hard to say who’s got the most-developed vehicle at the moment,” Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, a professor for automotive economics at the University of Duisburg-Essen, told The Associated Press yesterday.

Dudenhoeffer estimated it could only take another decade for the fully automatic cars to start becoming available for consumers.

However, he said, their were legal challenges: “Who will be responsible when there’s an accident — the owner or the passenger of the computer-controlled car or the company that produced it?”

In Berlin, the university researchers received a special permit in June to use it cars in regular traffic — under the condition that a safety driver sits behind the steering wheel, even if he doesn’t touch anything.