14 DAY TRIAL // Japan's New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO, for short) recently went public with the news that, as several tests have shown, self-driving vehicles can yield significant benefits when it comes to improving on the ecological footprint of the transportation industry.
Thus, said country recently took to sending four driverless trucks on the road, of which only the lead one was “equipped” with a human driver.
With the help of cameras, laser systems and computer software, the remainder managed to keep their place in the formation, and traveled at a steady distance of roughly 13 feet (approximately 4 meters) from one another. Inhabitat says that the four trucks managed to reach a speed of 80 km/h (about 50 mph), and that, all in all, these experiments were quite successful.
Apparently, it is NEDO's belief that, as early as the year 2020, such driverless vehicles will become a common sight in Japan.