Under the bonnet of MIRA's network-assisted vehicle

Robotic cars are no longer the future. The basic technology that enables vehicles to drive themselves and, crucially, avoid other road users has pretty much been cracked, not just by car manufacturers but by technology companies ranging from BAE Systems to Google. Getting these vehicles onto the road, however, is another matter – both in terms of developing certifiable and affordable systems and convincing the public that they are completely safe.

While some believe we could see fully autonomous cars on the market within a few years, it seems most likely that the technologies will be introduced gradually.

In fact, we’ve already seen the precursors of robot cars emerge in the likes of Ford’s latest Focus with its warning sensors and emergency automatic braking and a number of models with adaptive cruise control that adjusts the car’s speed to maintain the distance from the car in front. One of the challenges in bringing these kind of systems to market is finding a way to reliably prove their functionality and their safety. The answer that the Motor Industry Research Association (MIRA), a vehicle test specialist, has come up with is a network-assisted vehicle (NAV): a car whose brake and accelerator can be pre-programmed to follow a specific route or operated remotely via a wireless network.