3-17-17 driverless cars coming sooner than you think

A researcher with UW Madison’s Traffic Operations and Safety Laboratory says he’s excited that the university has received federal approval to start testing driverless cars in Wisconsin.  Researcher Peter Rafferty says the lab is talking to companies about testing the vehicles.  Rafferty says the technology already exists and residents will see more autonomous vehicles on the roads in the next few years.   “We’ve had some colleagues in these autonomous vehicles, including the Tesla.  We work with others on some of the senor technologies.  These things operate with a combination of GPS and radar and lidar which is a light based type of radar,”  Rafferty told AM 1170 WFDL’s Between the Lines program.  Rafferty says there are still many research questions to answer.  “There are a lot of questions about the sensor technologies, how they react in different circumstances like lighting conditions, ice and snow.  There are the whole host of policy and liability questions,”  Rafferty said.  “There may be some legislative and statute things to work out. How do insurance companies assign liability?  How does state patrol or local police or sheriff assign tickets if there’s violations by these vehicles?”   Rafferty says he’s optimistic that this year what’s called an autonomous micro-transit or mini bus will be available in Wisconsin.  “You can imagine a ten passenger shuttle that works fully autonomously, there’s no steeering wheel  or pedals or operator controls on these things,”  Rafferty said.  “They are low speed and they would be limited to campus-type environments like UW Madison or a short term event like an Oshkosh Fly-in.”   Rafferty says the technology will help people who have disability barriers, and the very young and very old.  Rafferty made the comments on AM 1170’s Between the Lines program.