In the EPFL's scheme, vehicles can travel together as a convoy that doesn't have any particular "leader." Rather, they work as a group with other vehicles in the near vicinity, sharing GPS, laser, video camera and other sensor data via WiFi. That way, each vehicle can take advantage of its neighbor's "eyes" to sense hazardous situations and better coordinate their movements. The system is managed by special algorithms that allow cars "to work together and achieve complex group behavior," says researcher Alcherio Martinoli. That allows the convoy to reorganize and adapt when vehicles join the group, change lanes or exit.

Are you really ready to ride with just a robot at the wheel? To make self-driving cars safer, researchers from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland want them to communicate both with each other and non-robotic vehicles to avoid any nasty surprises. As such, they rigged up three vehicles, including a robotic truck and non-autonomous vehicle, to function as one unit on a real road. By working in a team and using each others' sensors, the vehicles were able to anticipate each others' moves, making lane change maneuvers safer. In the EPFL's scheme, vehicles can travel together as a convoy that doesn't have any particular "leader."