ABOVE: Cyclists ride on roads
and pavements, which can
confuse the technology in
autonomous cars
RIGHT: Autonomous vehicles
use a wide variety of sensors to
‘understand’ their surroundingsnot at fault, but there had been a “technical failure”
of the automatic braking system.
TESTING THE COMPETITION
Failures are to be expected during the testing and
developmental phases. “It’s only through using the
technology and trying it in real life that it’s going
to be improved, because even the best developers
are not going to recognise every possible scenario
that an autonomous vehicle might encounter,”
Crowder points out. But, given that people’s lives
are at stake if an autonomous vehicle fails,
perhaps the roads aren’t the best place to test the
technology until we can be sure it’s more reliable.
Especially when we could put autonomous
vehicles through their paces in another way:
motor racing.
“In many ways we’re ahead of the industry,”
says Justin Cooke, the chief marketing officer of
Roborace, the championship for autonomous
electric vehicles that’s expected to debut this year.
“Roborace was developed to evolve technology
that will be used on the road, and accelerate the
speed at which both electric and autonomous
technology is being tested for road cars.”
But, despite the speed and competition, racing is
arguably a less extreme test environment as there
are no pedestrians, roadworks, junctions and