SELF-DRIVING VEHICLES WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT HUMAN BACK-UP SAYS MAARTEN SIERHUIS

Maarten Sierhuis, leader of Nissan's research center in Silicon Valley, has just released his opinion on self-driving cars - that they will never be able to operate without human back-up.

In his strong opinion, even when cars are able to allow drivers to take their hands off the wheel, how are they supposed to respond to on-road unexpected obstacles that they don't know how to deal with?

This is Sierhuis's reasoning as to why the key feature to autonomous vehicles will need to be the ability to call on humans for advice and guidance. 

The vision is this: if a self-driving vehicle comes across an obstacle it cannot handle alone, it will transmit information and images back to a command center for a human to examine and provide guidance. This guidance will not only be given to the vehicle itself, but to other surrounding autonomous vehicles to help them prepare for the obstacle. 

In this scenario, the human can provide a suitable course of action for the car to take and send that information back to the vehicle. 

"It'll be impossible", says Sierhuis, "to have autonomous vehicles driving around without them ever needing help". 

Although this information might disappoint those hoping for a more sci-fi approach to self-driving vehicles, it also brings us closer to developing autonomous cars that will be able to operate safely.