Remote driving

I have been interested in the ability of a vehicle to take a passenger from one destination to another without interaction from the passenger. I call this remote driving. However, after scanning the topic a bit from recent researchers in this area, the implementation appears to be further out than what I had hoped for. Basically, in my summary it is an issue that no single processor group can make all the decisions that must be made in order to drive, such as avoidance, braking, navigating, acceleration, etc. These tasks at the current level of affordable technology must be made by separate processor groups or robotics, and this becomes a large issue as to how to have these separate robotic functionality parts making the system wide decisions necessary for safe and secure transportation. It appears that due to this issue that this technology area is pursuing remote driving, such as using a remote control device, such as PDA, or others, to remotely power the vehicle. Similar to the remote control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) that the military is currently investing in.

So it appears that the current direction in this area, is not what I had hoped for, travel with no user interaction, but travel with remote interaction. Just to see how far this has come feel free to view this video of Full Size RC Car. It is interesting once you wait out the advertisment delay.