If it's truly a matter of time before we will all be driven around by machines, then these robots better learn the necessary skills from the best.
Stanford University has been working on autonomous vehicles for a number of years now but in order to take the technology further, the university researchers have enlisted the services of two professional racing drivers to monitor biometrics and brain activity when they take a sports cars to the limit.
From an article in Wired, Stanford's Revs Program is studying brain activity and logging driving data taken from drivers as they lap Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in an Audi TT as the experiment's control. What's more, supporting sensors including accelerometers, gyroscopes, and laser sensors can aid Stanford in understanding the behavior of the vehicle as well. If the experiments go as expected, Stanford researchers will better understand the brain's synapses and the complex computations that are made during driving so that a better driving algorithm could be applied on future autonomous vehicles.
To further nail the secret ingredient, Stanford is looking to see how the drivers will take the circuit in a vintage 1966 Ford GT40 rather than a modern racecar. According to the scientists at Stanford, modern vehicles with optimized aerodynamics and driving aids will only dull the raw data required. In contrast, the purely mechanical character of the GT 40 can offer a closer comparison to the driving demands of an average road car and provide insight to the reactions and correctional inputs necessary to stabilize a conventional vehicle.
Stanford Professor Chris Gerdes explains, "If we were to use a modern street car with a lot of electronic aids. We wouldn't really be able to see what the driver does on their own to stabilize the car and push it to the limits."a
The end goal of the project is to design a system that can allow a vehicle to recover from poorly negotiated driving inputs and save the vehicle from what otherwise may become a crash
To demonstrate the progress so far, Stanford ran its autonomous Audi TT prototype at speed around a race track. Although the exhibition run was certainly impressive, autonomous vehicle technology will still require years of further development before it's finally ready to enter the market.
However, will autonomous vehicles, like "Terminators," become our undoing? Yesterday, we reported another troubling incident of unintended acceleration, the latest of a series of accidents likely caused by sticking electronically controlled throttles. Hopefully, Stanford will be working on contingency measures to answer incidents of malfunction as well.
Check out Stanford's autonomous Audi demo run below:
