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Ultimate road-warrior tech at CeBIT

Matt Loney ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 07 Mar 2008 12:36 GMT

The ultimate road warrior should never have to drive themselves — far better to have the car do it for you. Caroline, the Volkwagen Passat from the Technische Universitat Braunswchweig that drove itself in the Darpa challenge is headed in the right direction. Its seven Debian-based PCs in the boot gather environmental information from the GPS, vision, radar and other assorted sensors, make decisions based on what they "see", and drive the car around complex routes.

Caroline may not have quite completed the Darpa challenge, but it managed a respectable seventh place, and the designers hope to have a version capable of navigating the streets of Brunswick, Germany, within two years. You don't have to touch the steering wheel or gear stick, leaving your hands free to work as you travel, and there's not even any need to press pedals — though the big red "stop" button in the footwell may come in handy.

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