In the USA and China, people are no longer surprised by cars without drivers. Europe is lagging behind, says Dariu Gavrila, Professor of Intelligent Vehicles. In the meantime, TU Delft’s Robotics Lab is steaming ahead in research into autonomous vehicles.
Mario Garzon gives an introduction on TU Delft's test car for autonomous driving. (Photo: Tijs van Reeuwijk)
Dariu Gavrila is the professor who ensured that Mercedes cars cannot crash into anyone. When he worked at Daimler, he designed an intelligent emergency brake that takes action when a pedestrian suddenly appears in front of the bumper. An emergency stop.
That was 10 years ago. Since 2016, Gavrila has headed the Intelligent Vehicles Group at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering that is carrying out research into all kinds of aspects of autonomous mobility. This ranges from observations to steering, acceptance, and car sickness.

On Monday 13 January, Gavrila welcomed visitors to the tour of the Robotics Lab for the 2025 Dies theme of Making Sense of Mobility. He explained that while in Europe self-driving cars is still a research subject, in the USA and China they are already driving around. Gavrila concluded that Europe is lagging behind.
He first explained that safety (think about his time at Mercedes) is the basis of research into autonomous mobility. He says that the number of accidents could drop by 90% given that nine out of 10 accidents are caused by human error.
Further, self-driving vehicles make people without driving licences and for whom public transport is not an option mobile. Intelligent vehicles can also take over during boring driving situations such as traffic jams. And finally, self-driving vehicles could make transport cheaper as they would not require drivers.
But before this point, a lot of issues around autonomous mobility, both technical and societal, need to be solved.
Teslas in particular often get confused and may suddenly brake
One example of a technical issue is the radar reflections at the entrance to tunnels. Teslas in particular often get confused and may suddenly brake. Another issue is that cameras do not react well to backlight. Further, historic European cities are a lot more complicated for autonomous vehicles than the wide streets in the USA or China. This requires a huge amount of training data that is not yet available.
And if the technology is there, the societal issues will start. One is legal issues – who is liable in case of a crash or injury? And then there is the question of to what extent would car drivers go for autonomous driving and what would they be prepared to pay for it? And what do other people in the area think? In San Francisco residents protested against the hundreds of self-driving taxis in their surroundings as they did not want their neighbourhood to be used as a testing ground. They put traffic cones on the hoods, immobilizing the cars.
Tour

Apart from all these challenges, there is still one other issue. However intelligent a vehicle is, at some point the technology will simply fail. This is where Dr Georgios Papaioannou’s (Faculty of Mechanical Engineering) research comes in. He is working on a back-up system should the sensors fail, the self-driving cars experience unfamiliar situations, or in extreme weather such as if sleet blinds the radar sensors.

Someone then needs to intervene, preferably remotely. For this, Papaioannou, together with PhD candidates Varun Kotian and Chrysovalanto Messiou, developed a console powered by the cameras and sensors onboard. The remote driver takes over control to help the vehicle out of trouble. Thanks to the shaking platform beneath the driver’s seat, developed by graduate Emma Schippers, it’s a highly realistic experience, allowing the driver to feel how the vehicle moves. A good 5G connection is essential for a lifelike experience.
Car sickness

When the car is driving itself, the user can read a book or use their phone without problems. That said, this is not always comfortable as car sickness is often a problem. In his simulator, Dr Barys Shyrokau (Faculty of ME) has replicated a very windy road and has made a lot of people car sick. “But never above level six,” he says. “Level 10 is throwing up.”
He also has a solution. If the vehicle takes 10 minutes more to drive the 30 minute road, the passengers’ discomfort reduces significantly. Driving slowly reduces car sickness – a useful piece of information for holidays.

The tour of the Robotics Lab ended with four mini robot cars that drive close behind each other on a test lane the size of a living room. They drive in a column, as military vehicles do. Transport companies are interested in this as it could be a solution for the shortage of lorry drivers.

The advantage of driving in columns is that only the leading vehicle needs to be completely autonomous, explain ME researchers Laura Ferranti and Lorenzo Lyons. Adaptive cruise controls and automatic steering are enough for the others.
Tests with driving in columns are also being done in China, but then with lorries rather than mini robot cars. This illustrates the slow pace of Europe that Gavrila mentioned and the urgent need to do much more research.

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j.w.wassink@tudelft.nl
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