UK designed self driving car

It may not please the boy racers and their ilk - but a motoring invention that answers the prayer of many a weary driver, could be just a bit nearer. Scientists are testing a car that remembers your regular routes - so that it can drive itself.

ITV News reporter Lewis Vaughan Jones reports:

An Oxford University professor explained how the UK's entry into self-drive cars uses a more affordable system of lasers and camera.

Professor Paul Newman said: "When the car is driving, it is using a small, quite cheap laser on the front of the car that casts a curtain of laser light vertically around.

"As the car moves, it paints the world with this invisible laser light and produces a local idea of what the world looks like in 3D."

The UK's low-cost navigation system can recognise its surroundings using small cameras and lasers discreetly built into the body of the car.

The vehicle is an adapted electric road car, linked to a computer in its boot, and controlled from an iPad mounted on the car's dashboard.

Watch the car in action:

Researchers from the UK have designed a 'self-driving' car that is much cheaper to get on the road than Google's multi-million pound venture.

Oxford University researchers have enabled a Nissan Leaf electric road car to 'drive itself' on stretches of a familiar route.