Though self-driving cars have been a hot topic for years, reality has shown that progress is not as fast as many people originally hoped for.?
So it's a good time for us to check out other transport means that can be made autonomous, like trains.
China's high-speed rail (HSR) technology has matured and widely applied in the country. The tech is also being exported to other nations.
And now engineers are making the train autonomous – running by itself instead of being operated by drivers.
CGTN did a live stream Thursday on the train running between China's capital Beijing and the northeastern city Shenyang.
Inside the train cars, everything looked like a normal Fuxing train. It was hard to tell if the train was being operated by a driver or a computer.
Fuxing is China's latest type of high-speed trains with a top speed of 400 kilometers per hour.?It first appeared on commercial rails in June 2017?and has been operating safely since.
According to the National Railway Administration, more than 170 pairs of Fuxing trains will be on rails in July 2018 as 16 new trains are being added to the daily routine.
Not all Fuxings run at the top speed because the old rails cannot bare such fast trains. China is upgrading the rails on a national scale.
