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| Swiss car builder Rinspeed showed its concept of driving after 2030 at last year’s Geneva auto show. |
THE self-driving vehicles pictured in I, Robot, are
a lot closer than you may think.
Few people realise it, but giant mining trucks have been
self-driving for at least six years in Australia and Chile while Mercedes-Benz
and MAN have already tested their robot trucks on highways in Germany and Spain,
as did Hino in Japan.
These trucks all performed without human error and because the
robots react in a fraction of a second, the truck can tailgate even closer than
their human counterparts do on the N3 every day, thus saving a lot of diesel in
the slipstream.
Robot cars are also ready to roll. Audi’s “Jack” last month drove
itself across America to Las Vegas while VW has climbed the Semola and Audi last
month achieved 240 km/h in a self-drive RS7 around the Germany’s Grand Prix
track. BMW scared the droll Jeremy Clarkson by racing on auto-pilot around the
Top
Gear track.
But none of these have been as brave as Google, which has removed
the steering wheel from their self-drive campus run-about and last month
announced it will provide its years of accumulated data from the Google car
tests to Ford, General Motors and Fiat/Chrysler.
Last week the German government announced it will next test robot
cars on the busy and important section of the A9 autobahn between Berlin and
Munich.
Germany’s Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt told the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung the project aims to help Germany’s car industry
to build an independent data platform, apart from American or Chinese
dominance.
The road will be lined with digital infrastructure to allow cars on
it to communicate with the road and with other vehicles around them, using the
700 MHz radio spectrum to send and receive signals. “Cars with assisted driving
and later fully-automated cars will be able to drive there,” Dobrindt said. “The
German manufacturers will not rely on Google,” he said.
“We must guard against the monopolisation of the data. We must
create for ourselves a digital sovereignty, regardless of the Americas and
Asia.”
He echoed the sentiments of Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn, who
said in October last year, “We seek connection to Google’s data systems but we
still want to be the masters of our own cars.”
Translated it means you can soon expect to tick “self-drive” as
opposed to “self park” and “auto-cruise control” when you order your next German
car — but it will cost a lot more than the self-steering functions currently
available at low speeds in the Ford Fusion.
On
The Road Towards The Future Truck, a report released by by strategy
consultanting company Roland Berger in Germany, predicts robot vehicles will not
become maintstream in the next decade. But like robot cars, 2025 is a lot closer
than you may think.
WE asked readers what they thought of self-drive cars — is it an
end to motoring freedom, or the start of commuting bliss?
Dave Barrowman’s letter summed up the responses best:
“I believe this is a two-sided issue. First, there are so many
incompetent drivers on our roads today who have absolutely no concept of what
depth of knowledge is required in terms of road rules; the effects of speed
verses weight inertia of a vehicle against the ability of the vehicle’s braking
system; and the ability to drive safely according to road conditions.
“Perhaps it’s time for robot cars to appear in order to get some of
these incompetents off the road.
“On the other hand I’m sure most of the petrol-heads in this world,
of which I am one, will be watching the development but staying with tradition
as we simply love driving and motorcycling. As impressed as I am with the
technology I won’t be buying a robot car any time soon even if I could afford
it!
“Thanks for a super supplement, I always look forward to
Thursdays.”
