UNL professor working on software to make all new cars self-driving

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) — An assistant professor in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s School of Computing is developing a software to allow newer cars to drive themselves.

Qiang Liu is working in collaboration with the National Science Foundation and Weisong Shi, a professor at the University of Delaware.

The concept of self-driving cars isn’t a new one; companies like Tesla and Waymo have already popularized them in the market.

But according to Liu, the problem with the current self-driving car industry is that you have to buy a specific vehicle to get the feature.

Liu’s vision is to design a program that allows all newer makes of cars, 2025 and up, to be automated.

“We utilize the computers and sensors the cars already have in them,” he said.

The program is also designed to be safer than current automated cars, which Liu said only use camera sensors.

“You cannot rely on only the camera to do the autonomous driving because of the light, weather, fog, mud or maybe a truck occluding the camera,” he said.

Using technology like a 5G network, cameras at intersections and other cars with the software installed can help.

“If you have cameras at the intersection that have a different angle of the environment, it can provide more information,” Liu said.

Ultimately, the developers want to make the technology accessible to everyone through a subscription-based service.