MOTORING
a self-driving car in action, I assumed we would be heading for the test track, where so much of the development work is done. Surely such a vehicle wasn’t ready to take a driverless trip on the road yet? But it was. No boxy little Googlemobiles here. On a day that will be forever etched in my memory as a motoring milestone, I settled into the passenger seat of an ordinary-looking Volvo V40 with Jonas, a Volvo electronics engineer and autonomous driving specialist, in the ‘driving’ seat. It was early days for autonomous cars, and still a legal requirement that company personnel must be behind the wheel, even when the car was self-driving. With Jonas actually doing the driving to begin with, we threaded out through busy Gothenburg traffic and onto the main dual carriageway. Then, with the car set in cruise mode, he pressed a switch on the dash, took his feet off the pedals, moved his hands away from the steering wheel and hey presto: the car was in charge. It felt weird and rather unsettling to be in a car with no human involvement in its progress, going at 50 mph along a busy road among other traffic. As this was a prototype being operated by a big box of electronic wizardry installed in the boot, Jonas sat alert and ready to intervene should the need arise. But it didn’t, and we ‘drove’ for miles with the car doing all the work, while we sat relaxed and chatting. Also, slightly agog. It seemed unnatural, but it was really happening. Autonomous driving has already come a long way since then, and almost every car maker around the world is working hard on developing
driverless-capable cars that will go on public sale within the next few years. This is also encouraging rapid growth for smart technology companies, such as Cambridge-based Wayve, working on pioneering artificial intelligence software for self-driving cars. Founded by a team from the University of Cambridge Department of Engineering, Wayve is taking a fresh approach to autonomous vehicles, using its research in reinforcement learning and computer vision to develop efficient and adaptable software for driverless cars.
IMAGES Citroën’s motion sickness- curing glasses (below), a modified Renault Twizy driving using Wayve software (above) and the Volvo 360c concept car (above right and right)
This is encouraging rapid growth for smart technology companies, such as Cambridge- based Wayve, working on pioneering artificial intelligence software for self-driving cars"
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