Self-driving cars are still working to master the snow . It turns out that excessive sun can also pose a problem for the coming wave of robot drivers. The threat comes from solar storms, those occasional eruptions of vast amounts of energy that can cause a massive spike in geomagnetic activity and radiation. While these storms aren’t immediately evident to human drivers, they can sever the data connection between a vehicle’s global-position system and the satellites that supply location information. That’s what could spell trouble for driverless cars now under development, at least if engineers aren’t careful. Scott McIntosh, director of the high-altitude observatory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, warns that self-driving systems should not be overly reliant on GPS when it comes to programming a 5,000-pound vehicle on how to get itself from Point A to Point B. In the event of solar […]