Baby, you can drive my car: yes, really because the driverless revolution is on its way

Imagine having a car that picks you up from the shops (or, better still, takes you home after a night at the pub). It's closer than you think
17 July 2013

You touch your smartphone and minutes later the electric car glides to a halt outside your door. You step in, take a phone call, catch up on email — as the car drives itself north and over the Thames, on roads packed with other self-guided pods. Passing bigger driverless delivery vans and robot cleaning vehicles, the car brakes automatically to let a pedestrian cross, then stops outside your office.

It’s science fiction, of course — though perhaps not for much longer. Yesterday ministers gave the go-ahead for Oxford University to test its RobotCar on public roads; other such prototypes will doubtless follow.

The RobotCar is a Nissan Leaf with two stereo cameras on the roof and laser sensors scanning the road ahead, feeding information into its computer so that it automatically turns, brakes and stops for pedestrians. Meanwhile, the main computer constantly learns, comparing the car’s surroundings with previous journeys. Driven via iPad, using cameras and laser kit costing around £3,000, it’s the UK’s first fully functioning driverless vehicle.

Yet in the US, Google’s driverless cars have already clocked up more than 700,000 kilometres since 2010 with only minor accidents. California legalised self-driving cars on its public roads last year: footage on YouTube shows cars navigating effortlessly through the streets of San Francisco.

“The technology’s coming, there’s no doubt about that,” says Josef Hargarve, senior consultant at Arup’s Foresight and Innovation unit in London. He sees a future perhaps 20 years off when Londoners will use pools of shared, driverless, electric vehicles.

Car design could change radically: full automation would free up cabin space and seats wouldn’t have to face forward. Some vehicles could even include meeting rooms. Cars could become much lighter, since they wouldn’t crash any more. They would save fuel as well as road space: they could drive much closer together.

With the end of human error, not only would most road accidents end (saving 1,900 lives and more than 23,000 serious injuries a year in Britain alone).

The emergency services would get faster and more efficient.

For the moment, this urban landscape remains a techie’s dream. Google’s cars cost at least $150,000 each, including more than $70,000 just for the spinning laser rangefinder on the roof. They will not be commercially viable any time soon.

And to bring simpler technology such as that in the Oxford RobotCar to the point where it can function in crowded cities remains a huge task. Most experts agree that this moment is at least 10 years off.

Mass technology is most likely to emerge from existing semi-automatic systems. Mercedes’s new S-class cars are equipped with a new version of its Distronic cruise control system: though the driver still has to take control much of the time, the car can drive itself on the motorway, keeping its distance from the car in front and staying in lane using radar and stereo cameras. And it can park itself, with the driver using just the brakes.

Meanwhile, German systems manufacturer Continental foresees “partially automated” control from 2016, allowing cars to change lanes automatically; from 2020, there will be “highly automated” systems. At the latter point, says Continental’s Vincent Charles, “you could be reading a newspaper or your emails at 100kph, and if the car needed you to take over in five or 10 seconds, it would give you a warning.”

By 2025 these cars will have “fully automated” systems, with the car handling everything at speeds of up to 130kph, including entering and exiting highways. Only then, thinks Charles, will such technology be likely to handle the much harder tasks of city driving.

That will be achieved in part through digital mapping information — hence Google’s huge investment: last month it bought Israeli traffic and mapping app Waze for $1.3 billion. Google’s ambition probably goes further. The web giant’s hoard of your personal information could also mean the car will know your diary — or where you really want to go. To the pub? The car’s already on its way there (and better yet, will drive you home).

Cities will need to invest in a new digital infrastructure, with junctions and speed limits transmitted to cars by sensors. And cars will at some point have to be able to talk to each other, too. For either kind of communication, there will need to be common technology platforms — still well over the horizon.

But Hargrave thinks we will see the first driverless vehicles in cities within the next 10 years. They will be commercial rather than private, involved in street cleaning, refuse collection and logistics. Arup is already involved in two London logistics projects to explore the use of electric vehicles for “last mile” deliveries. From that time onwards we will see the introduction of private automated vehicles.

All this might not end up looking so utopian unless driverless cars are accompanied by huge strides in other technologies. Such cars will need to be electric rather than conventionally powered — otherwise, fleets of private driverless cars could drive up air pollution and encourage a new wave of suburban sprawl. Driverless technology could also hit transport jobs heavily. London cabbies? So 2020. Refuse lorry drivers? Talk to the robot.

And all this technology is dependent on regulation keeping pace. Automated driving — even on a far less ambitious level — will require major changes to the laws of the road and insurance liability. If you crash and the car is driving, who is responsible?

Will we get there? The feeble take-up of electric cars to date is a cautionary tale. Changing something as fundamental as our mobility takes time and involves human attitudes as well as technological leaps. The truth is that automated driving will probably take years to become the norm at least in cities. Still, by the 2040s our children may tell their own offspring, as they pass a sight as incongruous as a horse-drawn cart today: “Oh look, there’s someone driving a car!”

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