The 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo will be used by Toyota to showcase its automated driving technology, writes Brian Byrne.
A number of its prototype self-driving cars will be operating in a specific area of the city, which will be fully mapped for the technology.
Toyota says it isn't emphasising fully autonomous cars, but vehicles in which there is still a 'partnership between human and machine' under what it calls its 'Mobility Teammate Concept'.
New York state is about to change a law about drivers having to keep one hand on the steering wheel at all times, so as to allow the testing of self-driving cars, writes Brian Byrne.
The legislation is ready for the state governor’s signature, and will afterwards bring New York into line with a number of other states — including California and Arizona — to allow such testing on public roads.
The change is only for so-called self-driving vehicles, though, as the law on a hand on the wheel will remain for drivers of normal cars.
The testing period will last for a year until April 2018.
Google may have got the initial publicity on driverless cars over recent years, but the mainstream carmakers are fast catching up, writes Brian Byrne.
I drove in a Ford experimental setup a couple of years ago where the car made its own driving decisions in slow-moving multi-lane congested traffic situations, and all makers have long had self-parking and automatic cruise control. Last year a Mercedes S-Class self-drove for 100km on a public road, and the C-Class has an optional automatic cruise control that includes bringing the vehicle to a full stop if necessary.
Now Audi is to send a self-driving RS7 to complete a full lap at the Hockenheim circuit today, during the German Touring Cars Masters season finale. The exercise will be repeated on Sunday.
The company has already tested the systems on another track, where the self-driving car was faster than one with a driver, and they reached speeds of up to 305km/h.
It's all changing much faster than anyone thought, and the technology business for this area is expected to be worth $87bn globally within 15 years.
A plan to allow self-driving trucks to deliver goods in the Netherlands could accelerate the introduction of driverless cars onto public roads, writes Trish Whelan.
Under a plan by a group of logistics and technology companies unveiled yesterday, trucks without drivers could begin delivering goods from Rotterdam, Europe's largest port, to other Dutch cities within five years.
The Netherlands is reviewing traffic laws to make large-scale testing of the technology possible on public roads.
Initial testing would start on computer simulations and the trucks will be tested on a closed track before ultimately driving out on public roads.
First demonstrations are planned for the start of 2015.
A detailed proposal of where, and how, the trials will take place will be submitted to their parliament after the summer.
Residents of Gothenburg will be seeing 100 Volvos tooling around with no drivers, writes Brian Byrne, but not until 2017.
The scheme is being planned at the moment between the city officials and the Swedish carmaker, to demonstrate how self-driving cars can deal with a variety of driving conditions. Accessing residential areas, motorways, traffic queues are just some of the situations the vehicles will be working in.
They will also find parking spaces and park themselves.
The project is called 'Drive Me — Self-driving cars for sustainable mobility'.
Mercedes-Benz is offering a Stop & Go Pilot option with its S-Class that is aimed at taking the drudgery out of driving in slow moving traffic, writes Brian Byrne.
The €2,678 system uses 12 ultrasonic detectors, five cameras, and six radar sensors, all of which help the car to autimatically match the speed of the car in front of it in heavy traffic, even coming to a complete stop and adjusting steering to stay in the lane.
BMW, Ford and Volvo are also working on similar systems. There's still a big 'if' in the legals, department, though. If it doesn't work, the driver is still responsible.
Well, that's what carmakers are keen to say. But you can bet there's a big lawsuit just waiting to jump out down that (slow moving traffic) road.
A driverless 'bus' shuttling passengers between two parts of a Singapore university is to be the latest demonstration that autonomous driving is a practical reality, writes Brian Byrne.
The Navia is an 8-seat shuttle powered by electricity, and it will travel in a mixed environment with pedestrians at speeds of up to 12.5km/h, using an array of laser telemetry, GPS and sensors to avoid objects and people.
The shuttle, built by Induct Technologies, has already been demonstrated in Lausanne, Switzerland. The Singapore trial will last two years.
Motorists may be using limited automated driving in as little as three years, according to German automotive systems giant Continental, writes Brian Byrne.
At a car symposium in Germany, the company's boss Elmar Degenhart suggested that some form of automated driving could be initiated on some simple highway sections by 2016, with speeds limited to 30 km/h.
By 2020, he said, that speed limit would be doubled and more complex automated systems could be in use. Degenhart suggested that long-distance fully automated driving could be in place by 2025.
