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A couple of years ago, VW and Stanford University built an autonomous Passat called Junior. He was clever. He won DARPA's Urban Challenge, a contest that sees self-driving cars taking on a simulated city environment and frequently bumping into things.
And now Stanford has taught Junior to do Bad Stuff. Bad Good Stuff.
Like J-turn slidey parallel parking.
Watch the video below to see Junior - who uses a combination of GPS, lasers, radar and sensors to navigate around - perform a most excellent parking manoeuvre. Good work, Junior.
This, clearly, represents true technological progress: once you've taught the machines to drive sensibly, you can teach them to drive irresponsibly. Don't forget the Stanford team are planning to send a self-driving Audi TT up Pikes Peak this year.
So, question for the day: what would you teach your self-driving car to do?
Sam Philip
Open Car Bar
What do you think?
Want to comment on this?
Twister commented on this article
at 03:59 pm on 12 May 2010
We might be looking at the future here, in 10-15 years time this might become available to normal cars, but than that would ruin what we call "the drive of a life time" because we won't actually drive, will we?
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Tokat commented on this article
at 04:15 pm on 12 May 2010
I don't think this technology will come to production cars because if the driver is not in control of the car, s/he will feel nausious unless it drives really smoothly.
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Afaque commented on this article
at 04:19 pm on 12 May 2010
Isn't this like the one in James May's Big Ideas episode on travel....
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Afaque commented on this article
at 04:21 pm on 12 May 2010
I'ld like my self driving car to drive over the speed limit all the time. It'll be good to see the look on the faces of the cops when they come to pull over the car and find there's no one driving it!
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StigsIrishCousn commented on this article
at 04:25 pm on 12 May 2010
A tailgating self driver would be awesome!
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