Google self driving car ready for the roads

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Google carGoogle’s purpose-built robots cars are getting the green light to drive on public roads.

This summer some of the self-driving cars will be tested on the roads around Mountain View, California, where the search giant is based.

Before now, the small vehicles have only driven on test tracks and have not mixed with regular traffic.

Google has tested autonomous vehicles on public roads but all of them have been heavily modified Lexus SUVs.

The robot cars will not be completely autonomous, but will have safety drivers on board who can take over if needed.

“Every moment has been building towards putting these cars on the roads where we can start learning even more from them,” said Jaime Waydo, systems engineer in the self-driving project, in a video released to accompany the announcement.

Eventually the purpose-built robot vehicles will not have a steering wheel or any other control though detachable versions will be used during the forthcoming road tests. The top speed of the cars will be capped at 25mph (40km/h) during the tests.

In preparation for their public debut, said Ms Waydo, the cars had been put through a series of demanding reliability and durability tests. Each vehicle has been clocking up thousands of miles each week on the test tracks – some of which resemble Californian highways and streets.

Mixing with real-life traffic will help Google engineers refine the on-board software to cope with many situations the cars have not encountered during testing, said project head Chris Urmson in a blog post.

“Getting these cars out in to the public and allowing people to react to them, allowing us to see them out there, that’s a huge deal and most importantly it’s the necessary step to getting them to drive themselves,” he said.

In addition, said Mr Urmson, the public test would let Google gauge how other road users react to the robot cars.

Figures released earlier this week show that four out of the 48 self-driving cars tested on public roads in California have been involved in accidents in the last eight months. The car makers involved, Google and car parts maker Delphi, said the bumps were the fault of humans in other cars.

The Google cars involved in these earlier tests are modified Lexus SUVs rather than the purpose-built robot cars.

News about the public road tests came soon after Google announced a new prototype of its pod-like autonomous vehicle.

In the UK, the government has put cash behind four projects that will test robot cars on public roads in Greenwich, Coventry, Bristol and Milton Keynes.

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Analysis by business correspondent Theo Leggett

As Google’s autonomous car programme rolls inexorably forward, it’s tempting to think the days of the human car are numbered. But it isn’t that simple.

The company has shown that autonomous cars can run reliably on well-mapped and predictable routes, but they are a long way from being able to cope with the unprogrammed chaos of a city centre at rush hour.

And what happens when there’s an accident? Questions of liability still have to be solved, and traffic laws updated to take account of driverless cars.

Yet autonomous technology is already here.

Many mainstream carmakers have well developed research programmes of their own. Self-parking, adaptive cruise control and emergency braking systems can be found on a number of cars on the market today.

So the transition to driverless technology is likely to be a gradual process, with the role of the human at the wheel becoming less important over time.

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BBC

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16 responses to “Google self driving car ready for the roads”

  1. Egyptian court on May 16 declared former President Muhammad Mursi guilty in the case of a mass escape from prison in 2011 and sentenced to death. Along with him was sentenced to death the leader of the banned Islamist organization “Muslim Brothers” Muhammad Badia and other defendants

    1. The death sentence imposed by the court still must approve the Grand Mufti of Egypt Shawki Allam

    2. man-o-war Avatar
      man-o-war

      Wrong article

        1. man-o-war Avatar
          man-o-war

          Correct, wrong is wrong!

  2. 5thDrawer Avatar
    5thDrawer

    “the public test would let Google gauge how other road users react to the robot cars.”
    Well .. if the thing only does 40 max, it better not be on MY road. :-))))
    I have a friend who rented one of those Chrysler Van-things that’s loaded up with bells, whistles, and the back-up camera, and a voice that makes him crazy. And rentals don’t come with the handbooks. “Every time I put it in reverse this big screen lights up to distract me, and some bitch starts telling me how to turn a wheel!!!”, he said.
    He doesn’t have a computer … I invited him over.
    Chrysler ‘programmes’ are bad enough when the battery is a little low, and won’t allow ‘start’ – even if all the lights are on, and voices singing, and warning beepers going – because turning the engine over with the cheap, light-duty starters might overheat them if they don’t get full-power fast. (which means the choices are: a burning car, or being stuck at 2 AM in -20 weather in a parking lot while wolves circle outside – so the computer ‘saves’ the car…)
    Well, we figured out how to shut the bitch up, at least.
    Being a rental, I figure some other modifications might damage his wallet when he returns it.
    I printed out a picture of ‘something good’ to look at to cover the screen – which still tries to tell him the worst route to take to get to work on time.

  3. 5thDrawer Avatar
    5thDrawer

    Google invented these so you can just throw the kids into them in the morning with their gear, slam the door on their noise, and say to the car: “SCHOOL” … then go back for the morning wine. Let the teachers sort out the mess when it gets there … what do we pay them those big bucks for, anyway.

  4. The concept car Bentley won the contest of elegance Villa d’Este http://www.carscoops.com/2015/05/bentley-exp-10-speed-6-wins-design.html

  5. French firm’s new ‘smart bikini’ to stop sun burn http://www.thelocal.fr/20150611/french-start-up-invents-smart-bikini

  6. Google hired this ‘brilliant’ kid at 18 — now his startup serves more than 1,000 businesses and just scored $15 million http://www.businessinsider.com/envoy-raises-15-million-founder-larry-gadea-started-at-google-at-age-18-2015-6#ixzz3dtVJu89G

  7. 5thDrawer Avatar
    5thDrawer

    “let Google gauge how other road users react to the robot cars.” …. hehehehe
    If they are only doing 25mph, I think I know how they will react. :-))))

  8. Gaza border guard IDF unmanned vehicle Photo: Amir Bohbot

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