Everyone’s talking Tesla and Google when it comes to self-driving vehicles, but a team led by a German university has quietly driven across Mexico without any human intervention — about 1,500 miles — and set the record for the longest autonomous car journey in that country.
Via Gizmodo, the Freie Universität Berlin released a statement this week about the trip and the project called AutoNOMOS. The car had completed shorter trips in Germany, the United States and Switzerland before this mega road trip. The German university is working on the project with scientists from the University of Nevada in Reno.
The route traveled the Nogales-Guadalajara freeway, and went through “four Mexican states, crossed the semi-arid Sonoran Desert as well as tropical regions in Sinaloa, and then crossed the mountains to Jalisco.”
Of course, Delphi reported earlier this year that it went from San Francisco to New York City in the “longest automated drive in North America.” But this Mexico feat is no less impressive, the infrastructure alone adding obstacles to the mix.
Researchers say that the car had to navigate “numerous construction sites, as well as narrow old roads lacking lane markings and hard shoulders,” along the way. The car has been cruising around Berlin since 2011, but they wanted the challenge and unpredictability of Mexico’s roads to test the car.
They report no near misses or accidents: “The car recognized all of the dangers on the freeways and reacted appropriately,” according to the statement.
They are hoping that the data they’ve mapped out and the test drive will help with advancing autonomous cars on the road — including recognizing obstacles and the “intentions” of other drivers. They will also use it to develop smaller, mini-computers that are not visible and more affordable to make it more universally feasible.
Watch the University of Nevada at Reno video about the journey below:
