LENDING A HAND

Tackling the motoring issues that matter

AS long as there have been cars, people have been looking to a future where we’ll be driven. Electronic chauffeurs, if you like, or self-driving cars, but there’s presently no such thing, outside of a few highly experimental and heavily governed robotised taxis.

Driving is incredibly complex, though, and having a machine take over that task isn’t straightforward. “It’s the last 10 per cent of what we do when we’re driving that machines are really bad at,” says Matthew Avery, Director of Research at Thatcham Research. The sort of stuff you, as a driver, take in your stride; be it roadworks, an unusual roundabout or perhaps a horse and rider on the road. A human can work out what to do, but it’s all but impossible to write a rule that a machine can follow when dealing with unique events.

Avery and his Thatcham Research colleague Colin Grover, Principle Engineer – Automated Driving, are quick to point out that there is no such