Unbelievable But Truth – Vehicles That Drive Itself
An italian company named VisLab has set a new worldwide milestone in the field of Vehicular Robotics. VisLab has developed a vehicle that drive itself, it can be called a robot driven van. It’s equipped with laser scanners, cameras, and GPS units and all the necessary accessories which makes it a perfect robot driven van.
It runs on electric power and also powered with built-in solar panel on the roof for back-up. After a complete overnight charging, it takes you to a long drive, it can easily cover 60 miles a day at about 40mph which is really cool!
The powerful built-in solar panel on the roof of van provides ample of energy to run its array of control systems that include laser scanners, cameras and GPS etc… Apart from that when the vehicle does not have a local electrical supply to recharge their batteries, oil fuelled generators will be used to produce the electricity needed.
In order to run robotic van, a lead van is driven by a human and autonomous van following behind. Following van is driverless but few people sitting in the back seats of the robot van, if in case something goes awry they can take control over. It must be really enjoyable to sit at the back seat in autonomous driven van/car.
VisLab has decided to demonstrate this amazing technology by it’s 8,000-mile intercontinental trip and they are already on their way, two electric vans are driving themselves on a 13,000km journey from Italy to China to demonstrate vehicle autonomy using a solar powered robot driver and if everything goes fine then their team will arrive in Shanghai sometime in October 2010.
If you’re really excited and want to know where VisLab team is up to then you can watch Real-Time WebCam which shows where they’re traveling through.
