Senator Alex Padilla, who authored the bill, has become an advocate for the autonomous technology in the public policy sector.
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"We are introducing autonomous vehicle technology to improve people's lives by making driving safer, more enjoyable, and more efficient, " the company said.
But a bigger leap was just announced: The jointly funded Autonomous Systems Technology Related Airborne Evaluation and Assessment (ASTRAEA) group in the U.K. is going to begin autonomous flight trials using a 19-seat Jetstream 31 commuter aircraft.
Research is being done on autonomous braking technology, which can stop a car when other vehicles or obstacles get too close, and lane-keeping support, which applies a correcting force through the steering if the driver drifts out of their lane.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration officials have shown interest in autonomous-driving technology and the agency is planning research to better understand the potential safety benefits.
Vladimir Polotski, the chief science and technology officer of Autonomous ID, will work with CMU's Savvides and Vijayakumar Bhagavatula to provide researchers with the instructional technology intrinsic to the emerging science of pedo-biometrics.
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Toyota is one of several heavy-weight car manufacturers and technology companies researching autonomous vehicles.
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"The End of the Road, " and so on, the presumption being that with autonomous mobility and intelligent highway technology, something valuable, something defining will have been lost.
The main technology underpinning Volvo's autonomous automobiles is wireless internet, which would enable each car to be assigned a certain point on the road and give different vehicles the ability to interact with each other.
That's why technology providers are promoting the idea of autonomous computing, a vision of systems that can monitor, administer and repair themselves.
Paraswift is a research project at the Autonomous Systems Lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich in collaboration with Disney Research.
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"We looked at autonomous operations of equipment as being the same type of technology that could be used on the moon as well as in a mining application, " said Michele Blubaugh, manager of Intelligence Technology Services at Caterpillar.
The key to delivering semi-autonomous capability will be the integration of lane- centering technology that relies on forward-looking cameras to detect lane markings and GPS map data to detect curves and other road characteristics, said John Capp, General Motors director of Global Active Safety Electronics and Innovation.
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Autonomous driving is also a potential profit center for a variety of technology suppliers.
People think that autonomous driving is science fiction, but the fact is that the technology is already here.
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The autonomous car idea got a boost in 2010 when Google Inc. disclosed its effort to perfect the technology.
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