Una donna guarda a energia solare di driverless veicolo dall Italia al di fuori del Belgio-padiglione UE nel mondo Expo Park in Cina a Shanghai, 28 ottobre 2
A woman looks at a solar-powered driverless vehicle from Italy outside the Belgium-EU Pavilion in the World Expo Park in Shanghai, China, 28 October 2010. It is not just a modern, technological and 21st Century version of Marco Polos journey along the Silk Road. The electric, solar-powered orange van, created by scientist Alberto Broggi, departed from Rome in July in an intercontinental, driverless trip all the way to the Shanghai Expo, which is considered a groundbreaking adventure mixing both innovation and expedition passion. The van covered a total distance of 13, 000 kilometers with no human intervention and fuel in the 3-month journey across Russia and Asia. Its motion energy was solely come from the suns rays thanks to a series of panels mounted on its roof. The van has its own eyes, as to say, front and rear sensors and webcams that send the vision to a GPS satellite system which transmits driving instructions back to a computer incorporated in the trunk. The information sent back includes obstacle and pedestrian detection (so as to avoid running over someone), land slope estimation, traffic evaluation, dead reckoning and trajectory planning.
