Love the car riding experience but not the driving?
Good news! The driverless car experience may be closer around the corner than you think with a 32-acre miniature city being developed to test driverless cars at the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor Campus (the location is close to the headquarters of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler).
The “pretend city” will be equipped with simulated real life driving experiences like pedestrians, intersections and public transportation and the plan is to have a fully autonomous vehicle on the streets of southeastern Michigan by 2021.
The test facility is being developed through a partnership with the industry and government as researchers ready the vehicles for real-world use, although driverless car test areas have actually been around in the U.S. for some time in places like Silicon Valley (Google Inc. has been developing its own unmanned car).
Besides the test work being done on the driverless technologies, recent car shows have also seemed to indicate that this is where the market will be moving in the near future with car companies showcasing semi- and fully-autonomous prototypes.
The industry still has several hurdles to overcome until widespread deployment is viable, but it seems safe to say the technology WILL be ready at some point soon. Perhaps the real question is will WE?
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SOURCE: University of Michigan
