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Driverless cars are safer and they are the future, says Alberto Broggi, leader of an autonomous-vehicle expedition from Italy to China

Tell me about .

We are making a three-month journey, , using autonomous vehicles – a world first. We’ve just left Moscow and are heading to Siberia.

Why are you making this journey?

I work on driver assistance systems – systems to take control of a vehicle when the driver falls asleep, for example. We wanted to push these technologies to the limit and see if we could remove the driver altogether. We had participated in some autonomous vehicle races, but these take place in a structured environment. We wanted to be in the real world with real challenges. We’re aiming to reach Shanghai for the .

Tell me about your autonomous vehicles.

They are normal vehicles, made by Piaggio, but , to detect whether a vehicle or pedestrian is ahead. Inside there are computers to analyse this data to determine whether to brake or steer.

Designing software to make decisions about driving must be a huge challenge.

Yes, it’s the most difficult part. Take pedestrians, for example. They can appear in hundreds of different ways but the system needs to understand that all are definitely pedestrians.

Do you trust your vehicles to do this?

Yes, I’ve stood in front of them when they are heading straight at me. In this field you need to test real situations, not just carry out simulations.

How autonomous are your vehicles? Are they really driving themselves to Shanghai?

Even when they are moving autonomously, there is always someone in the vehicles who can intervene.This journey is a test, not a demonstration. We want to test our systems and learn from the failures.

How does your convoy work?

It consists of two autonomous vehicles, plus back-up transport. The lead vehicle can drive itself, but is mostly driven by humans, mainly because we don’t have maps for many of the places we are going so need someone to decide which way to go. This vehicle sends GPS data to the second vehicle directly behind, which drives itself.

What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced on this expedition?

Entering Moscow. We had to turn to manual mode because the traffic was really crazy. Our autopilot system looks at road markings to determine where to drive, but the drivers in Moscow were not obeying these markings. There were three or four lanes of cars where only two lanes were marked, and the autonomous pilot could not deal with it.

Do you think that autonomous vehicles are safer than ones driven by humans?

Yes, because human drivers can be distracted. An autonomous pilot will always be in charge, ready to react. The majority of vehicles on our roads will definitely be autonomous within my lifetime.