Endless possibilities on the open road make it extremely challenging to build and train an artificial brain that is nimble and sophisticated enough to safely deal with everything it encounters.
Waterloo Engineering researchers are tackling that challenge with Autonomoose, one of the first highly automated vehicles approved last fall for testing on public roads in Ontario.
Dozens of team members are now gearing up for their first short drive in autonomous mode on a quiet Waterloo road - an event likely to make history in Canada - but the experts say there is still a lot of work to be done before self-driving cars live up to all the advance hype.
“Realistically, I think that within the next 10 years we will have some significant deployment of these cars on the road,” said Krzysztof Czarnecki, co-leader of the Waterloo project. “What will happen in the shorter term is really difficult to say.”
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