Post date: 26-Sep-2010 16:23:44
When a group of Italian researchers got tired of testing their autonomous vehicles in laboratory conditions, they set out on an extreme real-world test drive: a 13 000-kilometer, three-month intercontinental journey from Parma to Shanghai. IEEE Spectrum talked with project leader Alberto Broggi, who describes the technology behind the project, the challenges with real traffic, and what happened when a Russian police officer stopped the vehicles—and found no driver.