SHANGHAI - Two driverless electric vehicles have begun an epic 13,000-km journey from Italy to Expo 2010 Shanghai along the Silk Road.

The vehicles, developed by the Artificial Vision and Intelligent Systems Laboratory (VisLab) at Parma University in Italy, started their journey on July 26 and are expected to arrive in Shanghai around Oct 28, just days before the end of the Expo.

The European Research Council has funded the project, which hopes to demonstrate the possibility of transferring goods between continents using new-energy vehicles and without a human in the driver's seat.