self-driving cars
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Volkswagen has a long history of commercial vehicles, from the iconic Type 2 split-screen and bay-window buses of the 1950s through to the 1970s, past Rabbit-based pickups to the surprisingly rapid diesel T5 Transporters sold today in Europe. They've not all been as high-tech as VW's latest concept vehicle, the eT! We'll forgive VW the dubious punctuation because it's actually quite a cool-looking beast, and there's some interesting technology going on inside. The design has been inspired by VW's ideas of future requirements for delivery vehicles. They started with an electric drivetrain...
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Will Self-Driving Cars Be On The Road By 2020?GM's VP of global research and development, Alan Taub, believes that partially autonomous vehicles will be ready in the next few years, with self-driving cars a reality by the end of the decade.
Kurt Ernst -
Google's Next Goal: 1,000,000 Miles In A Self-Driving CarGoogle is betting big on its autonomous car technology, but the company has a long road ahead of it before those cars reach the market. Google's next major goal? Seeing its self-driving cars travel 1,000,000 miles without driver intervention. Last time we heard from Google, the company was lobbying...
Richard Read -
Nissan Working On Mind Reading Technology For CarsWhile the idea of implementing mind reading technology in an automotive application is nothing new, in fact, it’s something Ferrari has previously been reported as dabbling in, this is the first time that we’ve seen an automaker actually confirm an interest in the field. Nissan is...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Tomorrow's Nissan Reads Your Mind, Predicts Your Next MoveIf you think your car is sometimes a little slow to react when you turn a corner or push pedal to the metal, some future technology from Nissan might be right up your street. In-car safety and technology systems have got pretty advanced recently. You can buy cars that adjust their speed according...
Antony Ingram -
Stress-Free On The Freeway: BMW's Latest Self-Driving TechWe love self-driving cars here at All Car Tech. It's not that we don't like driving ourselves as there's nothing better than having the open road to yourself, but even in the comfiest of cars some traffic conditions make us wish we could simply teleport place to place. In the absence of Star Trek...
Antony Ingram -
BMW is the latest to announce that it is working on self-driving or ‘autonomous’ cars, revealing today a new prototype based on the 5-Series and packed with the automaker’s new “Highly Automated Driving” technology. Eventually, BMW hopes that its cars will be able to brake, accelerate and pass other vehicles all on its own, while also monitoring and adapting to the prevailing traffic conditions. The prototype you see here has already logged more than 3,000 miles, more or less with no driver involvement. It can do so thanks to intelligent software as well as...
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Latest RoboCar Prototype: Ugly, But High Tech And AutonomousSome cars are beautiful. Others are fast. Some others are incredibly practical. Some other cars are none of these things, but their importance isn't in their looks, speed or usability but the technological advancements they'll offer to the car industry as a whole. The RoboCar MEV-C is one of these...
Antony Ingram -
Connected Vehicle Tests To Begin In Official NHTSA TrialsOver the last few months the race to develop connected vehicles that "talk" to each other as they're driven along has picked up the pace, with several technology companies and carmakers developing systems to make our roads safer. Now, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is...
Antony Ingram -
China's Autonomous Car: Are Robot Chauffeurs Finally Here?Over the past couple of years, autonomous cars have shifted gears: once considered a novelty act akin to life-size remote-controlled vehicles, there's recently been serious talk about using autonomous cars for everyday transportation. And as one of the world's biggest auto markets, China isn't...
Richard Read -
2014 BMW i3: Autonomous Urban Driving Nearly With Us?Concepts featuring autonomous driving have so far concentrated mainly on highway driving, previewing the car-trains we may see some time in the future. For many people though city driving is the most stressful situation you can encounter, so surely self-driving cars would make sense in crowded...
Antony Ingram -
Future Urban Mobility Relies On Real-Time Data AccessThe requirements for travel within the urban environment comes under greater pressure with every passing year. We're already past the point at which more than 50 percent of the world's population live in cities rather than rurally, and it's only set to increase. The Future Urban Mobility (FM)...
Antony Ingram -
We recently told you that Google was asking Nevada legislators to allow testing of the company's autonomous cars. Now, less than two months later, we're not surprised to learn that Google's lobbying efforts have paid off. As we mentioned before, Google was pressing Nevada's elected officials to do two fairly specific things: (1) create laws that permit driverless cars, and (2) create an exception in Nevada's distracted-driving laws to allow folks to send text messages from the driver's seats of autonomous vehicles. Item #1 was the biggest of the two goals, and it's now been accomplished --...
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Volkswagen Debuts An Auto Pilot For CarsOver the past few years, there's been a lot of chatter about building "smarter" cars -- cars that interact with other vehicles and the environment to make driving safer. Recently, we've seen Google rolling autonomous cars toward Nevada, the Department of Transportation testing vehicle-to-vehicle...
Richard Read -
Volkswagen Shows Off Self-Driving Auto Pilot Technology For CarsWhile most automakers try to fix the problems with today's tech, Volkswagen is working on tomorrow's. The future of driving, in major cities at least, is looking more and more likely to be done by high-tech computers rather than actual people, at least if the latest breakthroughs in self-driving...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Video: Look Ma, No Driver! ZMP RoboCar Memorizes Route MapFeeling lazy? Don't feel like driving home from work tonight? Sounds like an autonomous car would be right up your street... ZMP's RoboCar doesn't quite have the aesthetics or practicality (and especially not the performance) of Google's automated Toyota Prius, but the technology it demonstrates is...
Antony Ingram -
You Don't Own, You Don't Even Drive: The Future Of Cars?It's enough to make the car enthusiast's skin crawl. Visions of autonomous cars making their way along the highway while the occupants go about their daily business. If you love driving and cars, handing over control of your car to a machine is like handing over a child. Bill Reinert, a mechanical...
Antony Ingram -
Robot Driving: First Pikes Peak, Next Nevada, Then Your Town?Recently Google requested a waiver from lawmakers in Nevada to allow it to test its computer-driven cars on Nevada public roads. Could robotic cars be safe on everyday roads? In the last couple of years, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has finally seen driverless cars fully...
George Parrott -
Google has been hitting the headlines pretty hard the past couple of days. Its Android operating system is still hammering the smartphone market, its new music service is causing a commotion, and the company is prepping to settle a hush-hush Justice Department investigation into its advertising practices for half a million bucks. Now we hear through the grapevine (aka the New York Times) that Google is lobbying the Nevada legislature allow its autonomous cars on the state's roads. The last time we heard from Google's autonomous driving project, the company claimed to have tested the cars on...
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Google Shows Us Why We All Need Robot CarsWe're pretty familiar with autonomous cars around here, and we've even been treated to a ride in one of Stanford's robots at their automotive innovation lab, which they launched in partnership with Volkswagen. You might also remember Shelley, their autonomous Audi TTS, which autonomously raced to...
IEEE Spectrum -
Video: Google's Self-Driving Car Hits An Autocross Course At SpeedLast month we brought you news of a car controlled by nothing but the brain, through use of a "neuroheadset." Today, we have two videos of Google's self-driving robotic car in action, at speed. The BrainDriver car is a cutting-edge concept, and interesting for potential mobility solutions for...
Nelson Ireson -
Self-Driving Cars Take A Step Closer To RealityAutonomous or ‘self-driving’ cars have been around for a while, at least in prototype form. In fact, just this week we reported on Audi’s autonomous TTS, which successfully charted the grueling 12.42 mile Pikes Peak run. However, about a year ago we reported on a government-backed...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Autonomous Audi TTS Completes Pikes Peak Run SuccessfullyAsk Rhys Millen or Nobuhiro "Monster" Tajima if they'd like a robot to take their place on the Pikes Peak rally course, and you're likely to get punched in the face. But ask the average driver trying to negotiate the tricky pass (or one like it) in winter, and you might just get hugged. Audi...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
Mercedes-Benz Improving Safety Testing With Autopilot TechnologyCars that navigate complex terrain or urban environments have already been built for competitions like the DARPA's (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) various challenges. Mercedes-Benz is now further developing the technology with an eye on future generations of safety and assistance...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran