Autonomous vehicles navigate streets without human intervention

Russian engineers have been testing driverless cars on the streets of St Petersburg. The vehicles can navigate a route, avoiding pedestrians and other potential obstacles, without human intervention.

Russia: The driverless car is negotiating the roads of St Petersburg all by itself. This is one of the tests for this autonomous vehicle. Its developer is behind the wheel, but he does not need to watch the road anymore, the car turns and avoids obstacles without his input.

Anton Baburov's task is to monitor the screen that shows the car's route and the objects that its sensors detect.

"At the moment, the results of the test in real urban conditions showed us that there is still some work to be done on the distance at which objects can be detected," says Baburov, Engineer and developer of Star Line unmanned car project.

Benefits of the Car

"They use several sensors simultaneously to secure the driving. Some sensors are used to back up others. In case some sensors fail or deliver inaccurate data, the car continues driving using back-up sensors," explains Alexander Yakutov, Head of the projects department at Skolkovo Innovation Center, a high-tech business area in Moscow. " Unmanned cars detect everything. It doesn't ride over people or bump into another car," explains Yakutov. "The drawback is its costs."

Boris Ivanov, Head of Star Line unmanned car project agrees - but predicts it will eventually revolutionize transport. "An unmanned car is very expensive now. It won't sell well, because no one will buy it until it's affordable," he says.

"I think that the introduction of unmanned cars will change the entire transport industry and attitudes towards personal vehicles. Personal transport won't be necessary soon."

(AP)