The UK government has announced that driverless cars will be allowed on public roads from January next year.
It also invited cities to compete to host one of three trials of the tech, which would start at the same time.
In addition, ministers ordered a review of the UK's road regulations to provide appropriate guidelines.
The Department for Transport had originally pledged to let self-driving cars be trialled on public roads by the end of 2013.
Business Secretary Vince Cable revealed the details of the
new plan at a research facility belonging to Mira, an automotive
engineering firm based in the Midlands.
"Today's announcement will see driverless cars take to our
streets in less than six months, putting us at the forefront of this
transformational technology and opening up new opportunities for our
economy and society," he said.
UK engineers, including a group at the University of Oxford,
have been experimenting with driverless cars. But, concerns about legal
and insurance issues have so far restricted the machines to private
roads.
Other countries have, however, been swifter to provide access to public routes.
Business Secretary Vince Cable 'felt safe' in driverless car
The US States of California, Nevada and Florida have all
approved tests of the vehicles. In California alone, Google's driverless
car has done more than 300,000 miles on the open road.
In 2013, Nissan carried out Japan's first public road test of an autonomous vehicle on a highway.
And in Europe, the Swedish city of Gothenburg has given Volvo
permission to test 100 driverless cars - although that trial is not
scheduled to occur until 2017.
Competition cash
UK cities wanting to host one of the trials have until the start of October to declare their interest.
The tests are then intended to run for between 18 to 36 months.
A £10m fund has been created to cover their costs, with the sum to be divided between the three winners.
Meanwhile, civil servants have been given until the end of this year to publish a review of road regulations.
This will cover the need for self-drive vehicles to comply
with safety and traffic laws, and involve changes to the Highway Code,
which applies to England, Scotland and Wales.
Two area will be examined by the review: how the rules should
apply to vehicles in which the driver can take back control at short
notice, and how they should apply to vehicles in which there is no
driver.
How do driverless cars work?
Google's self-drive car combines video and sensor data to determine where to steer
The label "driverless vehicle" actually covers a lot of different premises.
Indeed, the cruise control, automatic braking, anti-lane
drift and self-parking functions already built into many vehicles offer a
certain degree of autonomy.
But the term is generally used to refer to vehicles that take
charge of steering, accelerating, indicating and braking during most if
not all of a journey between two points, much in the same way
aeroplanes can be set to autopilot.
Unlike the skies, however, the roads are much more crowded,
and a range of technologies are being developed to tackle the problem.
One of the leading innovations is Lidar (light detection and
ranging), a system that measures how lasers bounce off reflective
surfaces to capture capture information about millions of small points
surrounding the vehicle every second. The technology is already used to
create the online maps used by Google and Nokia.
Another complimentary technique is "computer vision" - the
use of software to make sense of 360-degree images captured by cameras
attached to the vehicle, which can warn of pedestrians, cyclists,
roadworks and other objects that might be in the vehicle's path.
Part of the challenge for manufacturers will be how to hide the many sensors involved
Autonomous vehicles can also make use of global-positioning
system (GPS) location data from satellites; radar; ultrasonic sensors to
detect objects close to the car; and further sensors to accurately
measure the vehicle's orientation and the rotation of its wheels, to
help it understand its exact location.
The debate now is whether to allow cars, like the prototype
unveiled by Google in May, to abandon controls including a steering
wheel and pedals and rely on the vehicle's computer.
Or whether, instead, to allow the machine to drive, but insist a passenger be ready to wrest back control at a moment's notice.
source:-
http://www.bbc.com
