Four driverless electric vans successfully ended a 13,000-kilometer test drive from Italy to China — a modern-day version of Marco Polo’s journey around the world.

The vehicles, each with a passenger and equipped with four solar-powered laser scanners and seven video cameras that work together to detect and avoid obstacles, are part of an experiment aimed at improving road safety and advancing automotive technology. The sensors on the vehicles enabled them to navigate through wide extremes in road, traffic and weather conditions, while collecting data to be analyzed for further research, in a study sponsored by the European Research Council.

The project used no maps, often traveling through remote regions of Siberia and China.