Delphi’s Driver-less Car
Delphi Automotive recently broke a record for the first driverless car to go coast to coast across the United States. The trip was launched on March 22 on Treasure Island, located in the San Francisco Bay near the mid-point of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in northern California.
Using an Audi SQ5 they called Roadrunner, Delphi rearranged the electronics in the car to have over 20 radars and cameras to detect oncoming traffic, passing vehicles, and even cars changing lanes. Due to laws and regulations, someone had to be in the driver’s seat at all times. The only time the driver touched the wheel was to get the vehicle onto the highways and parking the vehicle at stops.
After the nine days were up, the car and the group of experimentalists monitoring the car had arrived at New York City, New York after 3,400 miles of travel.