Marco Polo's Trudge Now Gets on Wheels

Anchor: Like a modern version of Marco Polo's journey halfway around the globe, a driverless van has now finished travelling some 13,000 kilometres over the past three months from Italy to China.
The van, developed by the University of Parma in Italy, is now in Shanghai to promote the technology behind driverless vehicles at the soon-to-be concluded Expo.

Our reporter Zhao Kun has more.

The expedition started from Italy on July 20th. In the past 80 days, the yellow non-polluting van, powered by solar energy, travelled through Eastern Europe, Russia and Kazakhstan, crossed the Gobi desert in China, and finally reached its final destination of Shanghai.

Professor Alberto Broggi led the team which made the long journey. His research group from the University of Parma has dedicated themselves to working exclusively on the development of driverless vehicles. He says this journey -- the first cross-continental trip of its kind for a driverless vehicle -- is not just about doing it 'because they can.'

"The idea here is to challenge our system. So it's not really a demonstration. And if the system doesn't work, we'll try to understand when it doesn't work. In order to fix the problems, we'll probably run the same route for several times when we are back. In the end, we'll change and improve the system and have a new version of the software again."

The endeavour has put autonomous driving to the test in real life conditions across two continents in varied environments, including extreme ones. 12 refined sensors allowed the vehicle to drive safely in very different types of traffic, weather and road conditions.

Professor Broggi says the long journey wasn't only hard on the van and the technology. He says it also tested the strength of the team as well.

"They had been working day and night. Even though it's not always the same team, we always have the same people working for two weeks. These two weeks are really hard. They worked from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m., checking everything on the vehicle. We have many things to be certain about."

With some 40,000 people killed every year in traffic accidents in Europe alone, it's hoped this new technology will eventually help reduce that figure.

Right now 93 % of all traffic accidents are caused by human error.

Professor Broggi says he believes that if they can continue to develop their technology, they may be able to put a driverless vehilce in a real-time, simple-environment driving situation -- such as on a highway -- within 8 years.

For CRI, I'm Zhao Kun in Shanghai.