PORTLAND, Ore. -- Ford-financed researchers conclude that you do not need fancy radars or expensive lasers to successfully build self-driving cars. According to these researchers at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), all you need is a single inexpensive camera, access to 3-D maps and the University of Michigan's custom software suite for self-driving Ford Fusions.

"We adapted off the shelf equipment," University of Michigan professor, Ryan Eustice, told EE Times. "The algorithm makes use of a standard camera and a consumer-grade GPU for synthesizing the synthetic images for self-driving from remade 3D maps."

So far, Eustice, in collaboration with doctoral candidate Ryan Wolcott, are spending most of their time perfecting the algorithms, which eliminate shadows, identify road edges and recognize dynamically moving obstacles. For now a lidar is used to generate the 3D scenes, but once made, the self-driving car needs only a cheap video camera to enable ultra-inexpensive self-driving cars.