“LOOK no hands.” On the count of three Tino Ganjineh takes his hands off the steering-wheel and the VW Passat stuffed with computer hardware takes over. As “MadeinGermany”, for that is the car's rather cumbersome name, starts its autonomous journey, Miao Wang, Tino's colleague in the passenger seat, monitors every move on a laptop computer.

AutoNOMOS, part of the Artificial Intelligence Group of Berlin's Free University, has been working on autonomous cars since 2006. MadeinGermany is its most advanced vehicle yet. Watching it navigate the ten kilometres from the Brandenburg Gate to west Berlin's Kaiserdamm, at an unearthly hour of the morning, is a moving experience. This is the future. But a truly autonomous car without Tino and his colleague ready to grab the controls at any second is still years away.

MadeinGermany won permission to do test drives on Berlin roads in June. But that licence requires a Tino to sit at the wheel, like a driving instructor with dual control. With a GPS system accurate to under a metre, video cameras, dozens of sensors, four static lasers, and an all-seeing laser scanner revolving on its roof, the car can spot red and green traffic lights, follow traffic lanes and avoid hitting things. But it cannot make those decisions that are instinctive to human drivers, such as swerving or accelerating out of danger. Bright sunlight can make unlit traffic lights look red. All kinds of unforeseen factors can cause MadeinGermany to hesitate or jam on the brakes. For the moment it can only follow routes whose hazards have been mapped out beforehand.

But that is not to belittle the achievement so far. Some of the equipment is already making its way into production cars. In 2007 the group took part in the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) urban challenge for driverless cars in California, alongside American rivals such as the University of Stanford and the Google Car. Autonomous cars competing with each other tend to perform well, says Raul Rojas who leads the Artificial Intelligence Group. The combination of autonomous cars and cars driven by humans is far more complex. 

What of the future? AutoNOMOS has two other cars under development, one of them electric (and Japanese, since no German manufacturer yet produces an electric car). Osram, a subsidiary of Siemens which makes of electric bulbs, is also experimenting with sending data from traffic light to car and even car to car.  

Perhaps the biggest obstacle is not a technological one. There is a conflict between the goal of a driverless car and the passion for driving that many humans share, says Mr Rojas. Still, who could argue with automatic systems that smooth out travel on motorways and improve traffic flow at intersections? 

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