Thursday, May 5, 2016

WAY AHEAD OF SCHEDULE: Driverless Cars in California Next Year?

Tim Bradshaw at FT reports (via Tyler Cowen)
Google is sufficiently confident about its technology that its staff have discussed launching a fully autonomous taxi service in Mountain View as soon as next year, according to people familiar with the company’s thinking. The service may initially be restricted to Google employees, which might get around any legal and regulatory issues. Google has already run some tests with employees who are trained drivers.
Mountain View, California is the city where Google's world headquarters is located.

And just to prove how good these cars are, Bradshaw also reports:
[R]eal life brings surprises no-one can anticipate. Last year, a Google car rounded a corner to find a woman in an electric wheelchair chasing a duck with a broom in the middle of the road. “We’d never tested the car against a woman and a duck,” Mr Urmson says, “and it was able to understand this was unusual, slow down, let that thing play out and then get on its way.”
So there.

How fast of an advance is this? My Google spellcheck doesn't recognize the word driverless yet.

 -RW

2 comments:

  1. Frack Google! In this I look forward to suing them when their cars get hacked or hits my car for some other strange reason.

    ReplyDelete
  2. which might get around any legal and regulatory issues. Google has already run some tests with employees who are trained dhassan car
    rivers.

    ReplyDelete