Autonomous Car Completes 3,400-Mile Coast to Coast US Road Trip
Autonomous Car Completes 3,400-Mile US Road Trip
Apr 2, 2015, 5:37 PM ET
By DEE-ANN DURBIN AP Auto Writer
An autonomous car's recent 3,400-mile U.S. road trip
proves there's at least one thing computers do better than humans: Follow the
speed limit.
Auto supplier Delphi Corp. fitted an Audi Q5 with radar,
cameras and laser sensors to navigate the 15-state journey from San Francisco
to New York, mostly traveling on highways. The car drove itself 99 percent of
the time, Delphi said Thursday.
Along the way, the autonomous Audi never drove above the
speed limit, even when everyone else did. As a result, other drivers subjected
the car — and its human occupants — to "a few hateful gestures," said
Jeff Owens, Delphi's chief technology officer Jeff Owens.
The person sitting in the car's driver seat intervened
once when traffic was weaving around in a construction zone, and again when the
car didn't want to move into a busy left lane to avoid police stopped on the
right shoulder. The car also got a little skittish when it was next to
semi-trailer trucks, edging over to avoid them. But for the most part, it
easily navigated bridges, traffic circles and open highways, even in heavy
rain, Owens said.
"We expected we would be in autonomous mode most of
the time, but to be in it close to 99 percent of the time was a pleasant
surprise," Owens told The Associated Press Thursday. "The equipment
was flawless."
Delphi engineers collected nearly three terabytes of data
— equivalent to 30 percent of all of the printed material in the Library of
Congress — that they can use to further enhance autonomous driving systems.
One surprise: The variation in lane markings across
states and communities. Some had wide white stripes, others had narrow yellow
ones. Some were new, some were faded, and some were marked with raised bumps.
Delphi will have to further train its cameras to detect all kinds of lane
markings, since that's one way autonomous cars keep themselves centered in a
lane, Owens said.
Owens said the cameras also got a little blinded in
bright sunlight and in rainy weather, but the radar systems always provided
backup. The radar, he said, worked well even on metal bridges, which can cause
signals to bounce around.
Delphi will use the lessons it learned to improve the
systems that will eventually be used in autonomous and even driverless cars.
Earlier this week, Audi AG announced that Delphi will produce a new central
computer system that will process the data from various cameras and sensors and
tell a car how to respond. The system will appear in Audis in about two years.
Delphi is also supplying Volvo with the radar- and camera-based system that
enables automatic braking, lane departure warning and other safety features on
the upcoming XC90.
"This technology has come so far. It's going to make
such a difference in the accident statistics," Owens said.
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