Every driver on the planet must at some point have wished that their car could drive itself, letting them get on with more important tasks like sleeping, eating breakfast or checking out foxy pedestrians. The dream is a step closer to reality thanks to a roboticist at the University of Southern California, who has modded a car with a navigation computer based on the hippocampus, a part of the human brain that performs similar tasks. Early results seem to be quite promising, but whether it can figure out all the crafty backroutes to avoid traffic is another question.