Google Driverless Cars get Green Light

Google's robot-like cars will be hitting the road as part of google's ground-breaking driverless cars development program. 

When Google started designing the world’s first fully self-driving vehicle, their goal was a vehicle that could shoulder the entire burden of driving. Vehicles that can take anyone from A to B at the push of a button could transform mobility for millions of people all around the world, while reducing the 94 percent of accidents caused by human error, and also getting back the billions of hours wasted stuck in traffic, and even bringing everyday destinations and new opportunities within reach of those who might otherwise be excluded by their inability to drive a car.

Google have announced the next step of their project: this summer, a few of the prototype vehicles they’ve created will leave the test track and hit the familiar roads of Mountain View, California, with approved safety drivers aboard.

 

"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, announced project leader Chris Urmson in his 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 explained