Robot, you can drive my car

Every major automaker was working on autonomous driving. The most in-your-face firm is Nissan Motor Co., which promised to introduce not one car but a line of cars that can drive themselves-by 2020. Interesting, also, is Volvo's growing investment in autonomous driving technology. As part of the European research project known as SARTRE (Social Attitudes to Road Traffic Risk in Europe), the linal version of which ran from 2009 to 2012, Volvo supplied cars that automatically followed in a line behind a truck driven by a professional driver, saving effort and fuel. Where infrastructure is designed with robocars in mind, many of the hardest problems will be easy to solve. Cars will talk to the road, to the traffic signs, and to one another. What one car up ahead can see, all will know about. Even the problem of identifying pedestrians lurking behind shrubbery will ilnally fade away: After all, if cars can talk to signs, they can certainly talk to the cellphone in your pocket.