MOTORING Test Of Robot Car

Press, Volume C, Issue 29523, 26 May 1961, Page 11

MOTORING Test Of Robot Car

TDRITAIN’S first driverless " car had a successful public test recently. Hugh Cardew, a Government experimental officer at the Road Research Laboratory, London, had an easy time as the car steered itself around a three-mile figure eight track. Mr Cardew pressed his hands against the windscreen, held them in his lap and read a newspaper while the ordinary-looking Citroen DS 19 held the road well with only a slight weave. The Citroen was a standard saloon before scientists at the new £500.000 Road Research Laboratory at Crowthorne, Berkshire, started working on it. They laid an electronic guide wire three inches below the surface of the experimental track. Two detectors placed below the front bumper picked up impulses from the wire. A network of transistor valves steered the vehicle auto-

matically around sharp bends. The driver bad only to operate the gears and pedals. Scientists at the laboratory said the next step was a completely automatic car in which the driver was just another passenger. Another experimental car was shown at the public display which the Minister of Science. Lord Hailsham, attended. It was a Vanguard driven with a blind pulled down over the windshield. Above the driving mirror was a pointer meter which automatically showed the driver when he was straying from the guiding cable sunk in the road. The driver, John Spinlow, said. "Wonderful for driving in the fog. One is guided like a pilot in blind flying.” A gadget attached to the car automatically sounded a horn when the car went over 40 miles an hour on a dangerous curve.—(Associated Newspapers Feature Services.)