Mercedes built a self-driving truck that could save thousands of lives every year
J Thoendell stashed this in Tech
Source: http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/7/693980...
Mercedes-Benz believes it's built a self-driving semi-truck that could eventually help cut down on highway tragedies that kill thousands of drivers each year. The Future Truck 2025 can't navigate city streets autonomously like Google's fleet of cars, but is perfectly capable of holding its own on the open road — and that's where sleep-deprived truck drivers most often pose a threat to people driving smaller passenger vehicles. Using a combination of advanced dual cameras, radar sensors, and the latest blind-spot technology (Mercedes refers to the system as "Highway Pilot"), the Future Truck 2025 analyzes the road to get a sense of surrounding traffic and terrain. The "highway" part of that is critical; a driver is still required to get the truck onto the interstate and successfully merge into traffic.
But once that's done, a driver can sit back and relax in the Future Truck — with Samsung tablet in hand, according to Mercedes renderings — even swiveling his or her seat away from the steering wheel to reach a more comfortable resting position
Stashed in: Simpsons!, Self-driving Cars
5:35 PM Oct 07 2014