Reno, Nevada - Admit it, you've tried driving, at least for a very short time, with no hands on the steering wheel. Professor Raul Rojas of the University of Nevada, Reno just drove 1,500 miles without hands - from the U.S. border at Nogales to Mexico City - in his autonomous car. It is the longest-ever autonomous drive in Mexico.

With several terabytes of data describing the highways, and with specialized software, the onboard computer guided the car on city streets and highways through the Sonoran Desert, along the west coast of Mexico, up to Guadalajara and then to its final destination of the National Polytechnic University, Instituto Politecnico Nacional, in Mexico City.

"This is a new challenge, a next step to learn and develop systems, to learn ways to solve new problems for driverless cars," Rojas, who holds a joint appointment with Freie University of Berlin in Germany, said. "Most of the trip was highway, but there are many different issues such as construction sites, urban areas in between, potholes and so on. In the case of the Mexican highway, there is construction work and potholes in around 5 percent of the segments."

This trip along Mexico's Highway 15 sets, by far, a new personal best for Rojas, as his autonomous car, a 2010 Volkswagen Passat Variant, had already driven 190 miles round trip between Berlin and Leipzig, Germany. The car is equipped with a highly precise GPS system and specialized equipment that allows it to follow a pre-set route, and then drive on its own with other systems controlling speed, direction and braking. A roof antenna receives GPS satellite signals from which a computer calculates the position of the car on the earth's surface.

In March 2015, Rojas joined the College of Science at the University of Nevada, Reno as a professor focusing on intelligent systems, robotics, self-driving cars in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. He came to the University by way of a Visiting Fellowship at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton and Freie University where he has been a professor of artificial intelligence and robotics.

Rojas' team for the Mexico drive includes three colleagues from Germany, Fritz Ulbrich and Daniel Göhring of Freie Universität Berlin and Tinosch Ganjineh of Autonomos GmbH, an autonomous-vehicle research company. Experiences from this trip will be used as Rojas and his team continue to improve autonomous systems.

"Raul exemplifies our philosophy of living a life of discovery, pushing the boundaries of science to apply transformational ideas for the betterment of society," Jeff Thompson, dean of the College of Science, said. "He doesn't just look five years ahead, but 10 and 20 and 50 years. He thinks in leaps and bounds beyond where we are today."