VisLab Sponsors Milan-to-Shanghai Driverless Trek 133
incuso writes "VisLab announced the most advanced challenge so far ever organized for autonomous vehicles. Two driverless electric cars will perform a trip from Italy to China to demonstrate the feasibility of autonomous driving in real traffic conditions. Each vehicle will be equipped with five laser scanners, seven cameras, GPS, inertial measurement unit, three Linux PCs, and an x-by-wire driving system. The mission will start on July 10 in Milan, Italy, and will reach Shanghai, China, on October 10 (10/10/10) on a 13,000 km route though Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, and finally China."
The catch is, (Score:3, Insightful)
that it is probably illegal to drive such an automaton in real traffic in any country, incl. "Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, and finally China."
Re:For readers in other parts of the world (Score:3, Insightful)
The . as a thousands separator should die.
Especially when there's no decimal separator around.
Put a space if you really want to make it easier to read :
13 000
13 000.00
13 000,00
but
13.000 is just plain wrong.
Re:Is autonomous such a hot idea ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Lets say we have 1000 traffic deaths each year, if an autonomous system in all cars reduces this to 250 (due to programming errors) should everyone get back on the wheel then?
Re:Something should be done but not this... (Score:3, Insightful)
ah yes.
The thing there is that claims made in the Mirror rarely have any basis in reality or to put it more bluntly they pull figures out of their arse.
As a general rule whenever the mirror says "scientists have found" or some such without naming any names or research establishments then it's almost certainly something written in the PR department.
When they do name names and research establishments it's also normally bullshit but gets followed by denials from the researchers in question that their work has anything to do with what is reported in the mirror.
I'd propose that perhaps they meant *per year* but even that would make no sense as it would put your odds of surviving cancer until the age of 10 a little on the low side.
Hell lets try comparing their odds of dying of cancer with their figures for deaths on the road.
They claim 2500 people die per year from traffic accidents in the UK. Reasonably close.
They call that 8,000 to one odds.
They give cancer 2.5:1 odds.
If you take that 2500 and multiply to figure out how many people would have to die of cancer in comparison it translates to about 8 million.
Which is ballpark figure, very rounded about as many as will die over the next generation.
So what's happened is they've taken the *per year* traffic deaths and compared them to the *lifetime* cancer deaths because apparently the column writer Matt Roper is a massive retard.