Smart system could cut test times for self driving cars

Researchers have unveiled a new way to test self driving cars and says it could allow them to perform he equivalent of 100 million miles of driving in just 1,000. The researchers at the University of Michigan say their find would allow manufacturers to bypass the billions of miles they would need to log for consumers to consider them road-ready. The process, which was developed using data from more than 25 million miles of real-world driving, can cut the time required to evaluate robotic vehicles' handling of potentially dangerous situations by 300 to 100,000 times, saving 99.9 percent of testing time and costs, the researchers say. Researchers at the University of Michigan say their find would allow manufacturers to bypass the billions of miles they would need to log for consumers to consider them road-ready. The new accelerated evaluation process breaks down difficult real-world driving situations into components that can be tested or simulated repeatedly, exposing automated vehicles to a condensed set of the most challenging driving situations. In this way, just 1,000 miles of testing can yield the equivalent of 300,000 to 100 million miles of real-world driving.While 100 million miles may sound like overkill, it's not nearly enough for researchers to get enough data to certify the safety of a driverless vehicle.