On Top Gear, BMW drives you!
We saw driverless cars crawl across the desert in 2005, then negotiate an urban environment earlier this year, and now BMW built one for the racetrack. This video shows a clip from last Sunday's Top Gear episode where presenter Jeremy Clarkson gets taken for a ride around the track in a BMW 330i that can drive itself. Although Clarkson sits in the driver's seat, the various camera angles make it clear he is not touching the pedals, shifter, or steering wheel. You can tell he wants to hit the brakes as the car approaches turns at speed, braking just before the turn-in. BMW engineers took the car around the track before Clarkson's lap, showing it which lines to take through the turns and recording the path information in its GPS. In the video, it doesn't appear to have any other sensors, such as radar or lasers, so it probably couldn't deal with other cars on the track. But it's still impressive to see the car run at speed with no one at the controls.
