Self-driving car makes 1,500-mile Mexican road trip

SAN FRANCISCO — A University of Nevada-Reno researcher said he recently completed a 1,500-mile road trip across Mexico behind the wheel of his autonomous car, an impressive milestone in the pursuit of fully automated vehicles that can find their way in a variety of conditions.

Raul Rojas, a robotics expert with the university, drove from the U.S. border at Nogales to Mexico City, using an onboard computer processing data from seven laser scanners, nine video cameras, seven radars and a precision GPS unit. The drive was done in Rojas' modified 2010 Volkswagen Passat Variant, dubbed Autonomos, whose steering, speed and braking systems are controllable by the computer. The vehicle already had logged a successful 190-mile autonomous drive between Leipzig, Germany, and Berlin, where Rojas also is on staff at Freie University.

The trip south of the border encompassed city streets and highways in both urban and desert zones, and featured three German researchers from universities and autonomous-vehicle research companies.

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“This is a new challenge, a next step to learn and develop systems, to learn ways to solve new problems for driverless cars,” Rojas said in a statement following the ride, which concluded Tuesday. “Most of the trip was highway, but there are many different issues such as construction sites, urban areas in between, potholes and so on. In the case of the Mexican highway, there is construction work and potholes in around 5% of the segments.”

Testing self-driving cars in real-world situations is considered pivotal to creating machines that will know how to behave regardless of what the road and its environment steer their way.

Google's autonomous cars — both its modified Lexus SUVs and its new pod-like prototype — have cumulatively covered more than a million miles over the past six years of driving, mainly around the company's headquarters town of Mountain View, Calif., and more recently in Austin, Texas. These cars have been involved in more than a dozen accidents, but in each case the fault was due to inattentive human drivers, according to Google.

Last January, Audi demonstrated the long-distance prowess of its prototype pilot-assist system, which uneventfully shuttled a handful of tech journalists from Silicon Valley to Las Vegas, about 500 miles, for the start of the Consumer Electronics Show. And just last week, Tesla updated software for its Model S and introduced Autopilot, which allows the sedan to steer and change lanes itself.

There continues to be a split in the kinds of research and development done to forward the coming self-driving car future. One branch is working on tech that would allow drivers to let the car take control during particular kinds of driving situations including high-speed trips, while the other, typified by Google, is building a machine that would get rid of steering wheels and pedals and shuttle urban dwellers around at low speeds.

Rojas' Mexican adventure is in the former category. His Passat arrived on the campus of the University of Nevada-Reno in September, and the team set to digitally mapping the complete 4,000-mile route from Reno to Mexico City, gathering GPS data and integrating speed limits and other factors into the software. But the group quickly decided to complete the Mexico leg of the trip first.

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“We started at Nogales,” Rojas said. “We covered 250 to 300 miles daily, so it took a week to arrive to Mexico City. Some parts of the highway were scary, but we had no important safety incidents. The Federal Highway 15 in Mexico goes through a few big cities, such as Guadalajara. A significant issue is the absence of lane markings in long segments of the highway that have been just repaved after damaging Pacific thunderstorms over the summer.”

The team took turns as safety drivers: one to watch the road and one to watch over the computer and navigation systems. Two team members followed in a support vehicle. “We drove each day as long as the drivers could stay alert; we never push through long days,” Rojas said. “We have to watch the road, the controls and the car’s performance.”

Rojas is working to build autonomous vehicle systems that will perform in any situation the car may encounter and ultimately become the transportation system of the future.

“One important aspect to be considered is predicting the behavior of other drivers and pedestrians,” he said. “This is especially relevant in cities. If a human can drive with two eyes, I am sure that we will be able to drive autonomously with a computer the size of a notebook and just a handful of video cameras in just a few more years.”

Follow USA TODAY tech reporter Marco della Cava on Twitter @marcodellacava.