DRIVERLESS CARS HAVE BEEN LET LOOSE ON SOME OF BRITAIN’S NARROW COUNTRY LANES – Testing on roads that often have no lane markingsĀ
Driverless cars have been let loose on some of Britain’s narrow country lanes, testing their systems on roads that often have no lane markings and a speed limit of up to 60 mph (96kmh).
The autonomous driving project, called evolvAD, aims to turbocharge the UK’s roll-out of self-driving cars by demonstrating they can cope with a road network – parts of which date back to Roman times.
The demonstration car, a Nissan Leaf bristling with sensors and packed with electronics, drove a route several miles long on non-major roads, passing cars and trucks on the way, often at the speed limit.
Lidar uses lasers to produce three-dimensional images of a vehicle’s surroundings to help navigate around obstacles. The sensors are a component of many self-driving systems that automakers are developing.
Another development allows the car to access CCTV cameras along its route, giving autonomous vehicles the ability to ‘see’ around corners and change lanes to improve traffic flow.
The evolvAD project builds on the success of earlier ventures, HumanDrive and ServCity, as part of Nissan’s plan to see a future that’s cleaner, safer, and more inclusive for all.
Among the main challenges is that self-driving software systems have lacked humans’ ability to predict and assess risk quickly, especially when encountering unexpected incidents or “edge cases” where autonomous vehicles get stuck because they cannot work out what to do.
