For more news visit ☛ http://english.ntdtv.com
Follow us on Twitter ☛ http://twitter.com/NTDTelevision
Follow us on Facebook ☛ http://me.lt/9P8MUn
A new robotic car is being developed at Oxford University tha can make decisions about its route based on analysis of its surroundings. Scientists hope that this latest technology could mean an end to traffic jams.
Meet the car that will learn the way home.
It's the latest robot from Oxford University - the car that recognizes where it is and will take you where you want to go.
Oxford's Mobile Robotics Group says the car can not only drive itself - it can sense the presence of other vehicles on the road, something that GPS-based systems cannot do.
Professor Paul Newman says it will improve navigation precision, reduce emissions and most of all increase safety.
[Professor Paul Newman, Oxford University]:
"You see GPS is good to maybe 10, 15 meters, if you're lucky maybe five and it certainly won't work in big cities, it certainly won't work in the middle of multi-story car parks and even then I wouldn't want to be going around a roundabout at 30 miles an hour (50kph) in a car that only knew where it was to a few meters."
The vehicle - a one-off built for the project - scans and analyzes the road ahead - offering a completely hands-free experience to the driver.
[Professor Paul Newman, Oxford University]:
"We waste so much of our time driving when we don't want to be driving when we could be doing other things, improving our quality of life. So the big point here, it's not that cars drive themselves all the time, it's cars that mean that you don't have to drive all the time and that's exciting."
Researchers around the world are working on the future of driverless cars - earlier this year these driverless minibuses made it all the way from Europe to China and even the busy streets of Berlin have seen a hands-off steering wheel navigating the traffic...
