On Thursday, Deputy Minister of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy Kyriakos Kokkinos had a series of meetings with Estonian officials in the field of technology, research and digital policy in Tallinn, where he is accompanying the President of the Republic Nicos Anastasiades on his official visit to the country. According to a statement from the Presidency, Kokkinos also visited the company Autotek, which operates in the field of technology in the automotive sector.
In statements to the media after his visit to the technology company in the automotive sector, the Deputy Minister said that "e had the opportunity to get into an autonomous vehicle. This is an innovative project of the company and the purpose of the vehicle is to transport passengers without a driver, only with the coordinates in GPS, with the geographical map.
The challenge, he said, in the automotive industry is how these kinds of technologies will become commonplace in transportation. He added that in all geographies today there is an effort to introduce such innovative approaches to self-driving, but the laws, road signage and other provisions needed are not ready yet, so the use of such vehicles is in controlled areas such as airports, parks, university campuses.
But, he said, especially in the US, the challenge is to make the autonomous car part of the everyday functioning of a city, without this meaning that it will replace the conventional car one day He noted that however, the technology and innovation exists, it is a matter of readiness of the society of infrastructure, of people to adopt this kind of self-driving and it is also fully electric not only autonomous.
He said that in Cyprus we can start in an experimental stage and added that "and maybe it will be one of the suggestions that I will make to one of our universities to start planning this, not only for technological readiness because the technology exists, but to see in terms of infrastructure He said, "We explained to them the plans and challenges of our country and how these challenges are opportunities to work with the local IT ecosystem and we will host them in Cyprus, in cooperation with the Cyprus IT Association in June, to develop partnerships."
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