Driverless cars are a hot topic at the moment with car manufacturers looking for different ways to obtain this goal. Whilst Google cars have been stumbling into buses Stanford University have been hard at work developing a driverless car that can successfully negotiate a racetrack. I'm still not won over by driverless cars but I must confess I find this rather interesting. The main emphasis for driverless cars is on standard city driving so it's intriguing to see applied to racing. I'm sure racing drivers will not welcome this with such open arms though!
The specially adapted Audi TTS, named Shelley was able to hit top speeds of 120 mph at Thunderhill Raceway, California thanks to the wizardy of the university's students. Chris Gerdes, a professor of mechanical engineering said: "We want to access that same functionality to make driving safer."
"The students organise themselves like a race team for our test days. They figure out tasks and schedule the time allotted for different tests together.
"But once you get to the track, things can go differently than you expect. "So it's an excellent lesson of advanced planning, but also how to come together as a team and deal with changing priorities."
See Shelley in action below: