CORALVILLE, Iowa (KCRG) – The University of Iowa recently completed a research project on autonomous vans and buses. Specifically, the study examines how these automated vehicles could operate in rural areas of the state.

“You drive them a little different than you drive on the road. So typically on a gravel road, you’re driving in the middle of the road and then you’re moving to get away from someone coming the other way,” said Omar Ahmed, deputy director of UI Driving Safety Research Institute.

Researchers say they have discovered that autonomous vehicles are not designed for rural terrain. Automated vehicles can detect signs indicating steep slopes, blind driveways and other indications of the route to follow. But in rural areas, this landscape does not always include signage.

“In a way, the automated vehicle has to know these things in advance through a kind of very intelligent map that already lists all these challenges,” Ahmed said.

So in the future they plan to look into this and hope to connect people in rural areas to a service like that.

“Right now we’ve run this vehicle on 47 miles of road in Iowa and 47 miles is a decent amount, but it’s really not enough to capture the full extent of the challenges that exist,” he said. Ahmed said.

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