Russell Vickers

Essentially, you need to build a robot that does all the functions that a human does.

So essentially, you need a lot of sensors to be able to replicate what we can see with our eyes.

So you need those sensors to work in all types of weather conditions.

So not just cameras, you need things like LiDAR and radar.

And then once you get all of that sensor information from all around the vehicle of what's happening, you need to then you have a big supercomputer or a brain that's essentially trying to work out what to do with that information, how to follow the road, how to avoid pedestrians and how to follow the rules of the road essentially.

And then from there, it should be able to drive itself.

Yeah, so the way is because, you know, this is obviously a new technology.

So it mostly started in California and it rolled out on a kind of on a basis of it's up to the companies to prove that the vehicles are safe on the road.

So, you know, initially they would have a.

trained safety driver behind the wheel that could take charge at any moment in time.

And then as those vehicles then proved their capabilities over thousands and thousands of miles, then they allowed the safety driver to be fully removed from the vehicle so that, you know, there was essentially no one driving.

And that's the way most countries are following, you know, that they're following that procedure.

They want to do baby steps first.

And then when they know that they can trust the companies and the technology, they'll look to roll that out on a larger basis.

So the main thing for us at the moment, and this is what the Department of Transport is working on, is this strategy of connected autonomous vehicles.

Because from a legislation point of view, you know, what...

the laws in Ireland have been designed around a human behind the wheel so only recently the legislation was changed to allow what we call level two or level two plus driving in Ireland which is essentially if you think about some of the features that are offered on vehicles such as a Tesla at the moment which is their full self-drive supervised mode which essentially means you can

In certain scenarios, you can take your feet off the pedals and your hand off the wheel, but you must be in control of being able to take over at any time.

So that's now legal in Ireland, provided the vehicle meets the criteria of that in terms of certification.

But what we don't have yet in Ireland is the ability for vehicles with no driver in the loop, like you see in Waymo, with the Waymo vehicles in San Francisco.