A study to test people's reactions to driverless cars has used a "ghost driver" to record their responses. The work, by the University of Nottingham, found that, in the absence of someone in the driving seat, pedestrians trust certain visual prompts more than others when deciding whether to cross the road. As part of the study, a car was driven around the university's campus over several days with its driver - research fellow David R. Large - concealed in the driver's seat. Mr Large, senior research fellow with the Human Factors Research Group at the university, said: "We wanted to explore how pedestrians would interact with a driverless car and developed this unique methodology to explore their reactions." Follow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, on Twitter, or on Instagram.

While self-driving cars bring the promise of being able to sit back and enjoy the scenery for some would-be drivers, those who suffer from car sickness may feel apprehensive at the prospect of long rides where the machine does most of the driving. To ease their pain, and the pain of other passengers, Japanese auto supplier NHK Spring says it has found the cure: a car seat that minimizes motion sickness for passengers in autonomous vehicles. The headrest supports the occipital bone behind the ear from both sides, the company says, keeping the head steady when the vehicle speeds up or slows down, or when the wheels hit a curve--situations that can trigger symptoms for people with motion sickness. Motion sickness is caused when visual information does not match motions picked up by the inner ear. Minimizing the motion of the head postpones the onset of symptoms--such as stomach discomfort, nausea and yawning--by about threefold the normal length of time, according to NHK Spring, which will sell the seat to automakers.

Car manufacturer Ford uses a'mechanised posterior' to simulate a sweaty person's bottom, it has been revealed. Ford says it uses the robot designed to imitate a large man who has just finished exercising, to test the durability of its seats. The American car maker says the'Robutt' guarantees customer's seats will stay springy after several years of use. Robutt, Ford claims, reveals the'exact pass pattern of a person's sitting behaviour' and allows the firm to build better car seats. Footage of the creation was released by Ford to show the unusual process.

Apple has filed a patent that sheds new light on its rumored car plans. The iPhone maker filed a document Tuesday titled'Haptic feedback for dynamic seating system' that describes a futuristic car seat capable of interacting with passengers in various ways. Seats might alert users via vibrating signals or fold to put the passenger in a more secure position. The tools could potentially be used to improve safety in a self-driving car - something Apple has been testing via Lexus SUVs equipped with sensors and cameras. Apple has filed a patent that sheds new light on its rumored car plans.

Car manufacturing company Ford has created a new device to help engineers design comfortable products: the Robutt. The robot was invented so that engineers at the company can test the wear and tear that comes with 10 years of driving a new car. It has the ability to sit on a car seat 25,000 times in three weeks, mimicking the effect of a decade of use. The Robutt helped a team designing the new Ford Fiesta create seats that would weather 10 years of use. The Robutt sits on a seat 25,000 times in three weeks.

Last month, a bizarre video showing a man disguised as a car seat while driving a silver van went viral, before it was revealed that the stunt was part of an autonomous car test. Now, Ford has admitted that it was in on the research. In a blog post, the firm said it was involved in the stunt that shocked the internet and Virginia residents, who saw the car on the roads and thought it didn't have a single human inside. The test was designed to learn how hand waves and other informal language between pedestrians and drivers - and the lack thereof when cars go driverless - affects driving. It's been known the viral video showing a man disguised in a car seat costume controlling a silver van was part of a self-driving car test and not just a spoof, but it's now been revealed Ford was in on it In August, Virginia residents were shocked to see a car with no driver on the streets.

Last month, Northern Virginia residents were startled to see a grey Ford Transit Connect van motoring around their neighborhood--without a driver inside. OK, not quite: Further inspection revealed that there was a driver inside but that he was concealed inside a costume that made him look like an empty car seat. Virginia Tech Transportation Institute took credit--nay, responsibility--for car seat man but wouldn't reveal more. Today, we know the truth. Car seat man was part of a Ford-funded study by researchers at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute into how autonomous vehicles will interact with humans on the road.

Chip giant Intel aims to become the foremost brain-builder for self-driving cars. The Grand Canyon State is crawling with AVs because of its temperate climate (lidar and cameras are not cool with rain or snow) and because it is deeply chill about experimental tech roaming its highways. "Government should be there to facilitate these technologies, not inhibit," an Arizona DOT official told WIRED. Mazda made a bid for the near-er future with the news that it has crafted a new gas engine just as efficient as diesel ones--and cleaner, too. The company has kept some parts of its breakthrough close to the chest, but you can look for these new engines in 2019.

Somewhere in northern Virginia, a man dressed as a car seat seeks the answers to vital questions about how autonomous vehicles interact with the public. The fellow, who had nothing to say when confronted by a local NBC reporter on Tuesday, spends his days driving a silver Ford Transit Connect van around Arlington County. It requires a little skill to do this without moving one's arms, but this goofy endeavor is done in the name of science, and builds on work done in recent years by similarly costumed researchers at Stanford University. Car Seat Man is part of a Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study into human-vehicle interactions--information automakers and tech companies like Google will find invaluable as they loose thousands of self-driving cars onto the country's roads. The Institute confirmed that the guy inside that definitely-not-store-bought car seat costume and his shiny new van are part of its research effort.

Tech blogs went crazy over the weekend after a new self-driving car was seen rolling around Arlington, Virginia. Unlike vehicles from Google Waymo, Uber and others, the car didn't have any obvious signs of a Lidar array, the chunky imaging technology most autonomous vehicles use to gauge the state of the road ahead. Instead, it had just a small bar mounted on the dashboard, which blinked red when it was at a stop light and green once the cost was clear. Even more intriguingly, the car appeared to be genuinely autonomous: there was no-one sitting in the driver's seat. Typically, a human overseer is required in the testing phase to make sure that the car doesn't go wild and run over a marching band, but somehow this car had managed to find a loophole.