In this Thursday, July 15, 2010 video cameras are seen on the front of an unmanned electric-powered vehicle as a technician works on another similar vehicle in Parma, Italy. Next week, four electric-powered orange vans depart on what has been conceived as the longest-ever test drive of unmanned vehicles: a 13,000-kilometer (8,000-mile), three-month road trip from Italy to China. The vehicles, equipped with four laser scanners and seven video cameras that work in concert to detect and help avoid obstacles, will brave the traffic of Moscow, the intense summer heat of Siberia and the bitter cold of the Gobi desert before the planned arrival in Shanghai at the end of October.(AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)

(AP) -- It's a modern-day version of Marco Polo's journey halfway around the world - but is anyone at the controls?