There’s a lot of talk on the scene these days about cars that drive themselves, cars without steering wheels or pedals and even cars that can talk to you and act as a personal assistant.
That kind of tech is usually of the “big money” variety, so it’s thought that only companies dealing in the billions can afford to do the research – and yet a new company called Cruise, that employs MIT-trained robotics engineers has set out to do the same, with far fewer resources.
What’s particularly cool about their approach is that they are making a system that would be easily mountable on any existing cars. It wouldn’t be fully autonomous, though, being fairly rudimentary in its current design phase.
Three main components would make it up: roof-mounted sensors, actuators to control steering, throttle and brake input and a central brain to tie it all in and make it work seamlessly.
One instance where this system could be useful, for instance, is merging onto the highway. You would do part of it yourself, by steering the car onto the onramp, though, from there on, you’d be able to hit a button (or say a command) and the car would go into autonomous mode and merge itself into the highway traffic.
The system (called RP-1) is expected to debut next year, for an estimated purchase price of $10,000.
By Andrei Nedelea
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