Car race in simulated city gives vision of driverless future

It is the most relaxing time of the day. Put your feet up, sleep off that late night, read the paper, watch a film or catch up on email. The 2020 commute to work is nothing like the brain-pounding trudge through traffic jams of the early 21st century. Your autonomous robot car now lets you take your hands off the wheel and do something more enjoyable and productive instead - although driving bumper to bumper with the car in front at high speed was a little unnerving at first.

This is Sebastian Thrun's vision of the daily commute once we are all in the hands of a robot chauffeur. For Professor Thrun, the reality of driving is a long way from the vision of freedom promoted by car ads.

"No one on Earth can tell me that commuting is fun. It is not recreational driving. It is driving because we have to drive. We could free up that time," he said.

Worse, people are a dangerous liability behind the wheel. "If you go to a funeral of a person who died because another driver picked up a cellphone and didn't pay attention, it is extremely hard to defend our right to drive where we like." And because robots are more accurate and have quicker reaction times, the cars can drive closer together.

Prof Thrun, director of Stanford University's artificial intelligence laboratory, is the leader of a team of engineers and computer scientists who have created Junior, the hot favourite to win a lucrative US military-funded race for autonomous robot cars.

Contestants in the Darpa Urban Challenge, which reaches its climax today, must build driverless cars that can navigate a simulated urban course while avoiding obstacles, obeying the rules of the road and avoiding other vehicles driven by stunt drivers. The qualifying rounds at Victorville, California, have included merging into heavy traffic, finding an alternative route after encountering an obstacle and parking. Eleven teams made it to the final. The race is sponsored by the US military's Defence Advanced Projects Agency and the fastest vehicle wins $2m.

The Urban Challenge is the successor to the Darpa Grand Challenge, a robot car race along a 132-mile desert course. When it was first held in 2004, 15 cars entered and none finished. By 2005 four teams finished in under the 10 hour time limit. The US Congress has pledged to make a third of military ground vehicles unmanned by 2015. Prof Thrun said he would not collaborate on a military attack vehicle, but would help to build one that helped to rescue casualties.