[Nfbf-l] Google purpose-built robot cars tested on public roads

[Alan Dicey]

Google purpose-built robot cars tested on public roads

Google unveiled a new prototype of its self-driving car earlier this week
Google'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.

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.

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.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-32750810

With Best Regards,
God Bless,
Alan
Plantation, Florida