Hands-tree driving

摘要

As sensors go, the human eye is quite a piece of kit. It's a pity the brain so often fails to make best use of the information - people are prone to making poor choices behind the wheel. Drivers may never want to relinquish full control, but features such as active steering, cruise control and ESC show that they already want electronics to do some of the work some of the time, especially if it takes tedium or risk from driving.rnVolkswagen thinks so too. It has made several autonomous vehicles already, and has worked with a number of teams in the US military's DARPA -Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -Challenge, including 2007's second-placed Passat TDI Junior, entered by Stanford University.rnThe carmaker wants to develop vehicles that help to minimise human error, and are therefore safer. Its electronic research lab in Palo Alto, California is one of the centres working on advanced projects to make this possible.rn"The 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge explored what is possible in terms of intelligent vehicles in an urban environment," says Dr Arne Stoschek, VW programme engineer for Junior. "Guided driving on highways and parking - these are topics that we are working on. Solutions can be derived from our research."