Chinese military tests unmanned 'smart' car

Recently, the unmanned smart car of Chinese military finished its test run on the 114-kilometre-long section of the expressway from Beijing to Tianjin in complicated driving conditions, in 85 minutes solely through intelligent-control by computer, state-run People's Daily reported.

Its maximum speed was as high as 105 kmph and it overtook other cars 33 times, the report said.

"Its speed was 79 kilometres per hour on average, and 105 to maximum," Liu Hongquan, associate professor of Military Transportation University told the Daily.

Cameras placed in the car, serve as its "eyes" while radar and computer as the "brain". Its brain is an executive system composed of two computers and a standby computer which are used to drive the mechanical device and realise the independent braking and similar actions through comprehensive analysis of all sorts of information collected, it said.

Therefore, the car may run as good as a skilled driver can drive.

Its future application includes avoiding fatigue driving besides travelling without the driver.

Zheng Nanning, academician and expert of auto control at Chinese Academy of Engineering, said that the future application of unmanned smart cars will be quite extensive though there are a variety of relevant problems yet to be fixed.

The car can also effectively minimise fatigue while driving.

The driver may turn the car into unmanned driving status and sleep at ease whenever he feels tired, it is claimed.

An optimised driving route planning can be achieved by virtue of organic integration of the smart car and the Internet and cloud computing technologies, which can ease traffic jam troubles, he said.

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