The Google Self-Driving Car, commonly abbreviated as SDC, is a project by Google X that involves developing technology for autonomous cars, mainly electric cars. The software powering Google's cars is called Google Chauffeur. Lettering on the side of each car identifies it as a "self-driving car". The project is currently being led by Google engineer Sebastian Thrun, former director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and co-inventor of Google Street View. Thrun's team at Stanford created the robotic vehicle Stanley which won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge and its US$2 million prize from the United States Department of Defense. The team developing the system consisted of 15 engineers working for Google, including Chris Urmson, Mike Montemerlo, and Anthony Levandowski who had worked on the DARPA Grand and Urban Challenges.
Legislation has been passed in four U.S. states and Washington, D.C. allowing driverless cars.
In May 2014, Google presented a new concept for their drivetesting
ar that had neither a steering wheel nor pedals,[11] and unveiled a fully functioning prototype in December of that year that they planned to test on San Francisco Bay Area roads beginning in 2015. Google plans to make these cars available to the public in 2020.
Technology
Google's robotic cars have about $150,000 in equipment including a $70,000 LIDAR system. The range finder mounted on the top is a Velodyne 64-beam laser. This laser allows the vehicle to generate a detailed 3D map of its environment. The car then takes these generated maps and combines them with high-resolution maps of the world, producing different types of data models that allow it to drive itself.
As of June 2014, the system works with a very high definition inch-precision map of the area the vehicle is expected to use, including how high the traffic lights are; in addition to on-board systems, some computation is performed on remote computer farms.
Road testing
A Toyota Prius modified to operate as a Google driverless car, navigating a test course
In 2012, the test group of vehicles included six Toyota Prius, an Audi TT, and three Lexus RX450h, each accompanied in the driver's seat by one of a dozen drivers with unblemished driving records and in the passenger seat by one of Google's engineers. By May 2015, that fleet consisted solely of 23 Lexus SUVs.
Google's vehicles have traversed San Francisco's Lombard Street, famed for its steep hairpin turns, and through city traffic. The vehicles have driven over the Golden Gate Bridge and around Lake Tahoe.The system drives at the speed limit it has stored on its maps and maintains its distance from other vehicles using its system of sensors.The system provides an override that ws a human driver to take control of the car by stepping on the brake or turning the wheel, similar to cruise control systems already found in many cars today.
On March 28, 2012, Google posted a YouTube video showing Steve Mahan, a resident of Morgan Hill, California, being taken on a ride in Google's self-driving Toyota Prius. In the video, Mahan states "Ninety-five percent of my vision is gone, I'm well past legally blind". In the description of the YouTube video, it is noted that the carefully programmed route takes him from his home to a drive-through restaurant, then to the dry cleaning shop, and finally back home.
In August 2012, the team announced that they have completed over 300,000 autonomous-driving miles (500,000 km) accident-free, typically have about a dozen cars on the road at any given time, and are starting to test them with single drivers instead of in pairs.Four U.S. states have passed laws permitting autonomous cars as of December 2013: Nevada, Florida, California, and Michigan.A law proposed in Texas would establish criteria for allowing "autonomous motor vehicles".
In April 2014, the team announced that their vehicles have now logged nearly 700,000 autonomous miles (1.1 million km). In late May, Google revealed a new prototype of its driverless car, which had no steering wheel, gas pedal, or brake pedal, being 100% autonomous.
In June 2015, the team announced that their vehicles have now driven over 1 million miles, stating that this was "the equivalent of 75 years of typical U.S. adult driving", and that in the process they had encountered 200,000 stop signs, 600,000 traffic lights, and 180 million other vehicles. Google also announced its prototype vehicles were being road tested in Mountain View, California.During testing, the prototypes' speed cannot exceed 25 mph and will have safety drivers aboard the entire time.
Traffic accidents
As of July 2015, Google's 23 self-driving cars have been involved in 14 minor traffic accidents on public roads, but Google maintains that in all cases the vehicle itself was not at fault because the cars were either being manually driven or the driver of another vehicle was at fault.In June 2015, Google founder Sergey Brin confirmed that there had been 12 accidents as of that date, eight of which involved being rear-ended at a stop sign or traffic light, two in which the vehicle was side-swiped by another driver, one of which involved another driver rolling through a stop sign, and one where a Google employee was manually driving the car.
In July 2015, three Google employees suffered minor injuries when the self-driving car they were riding in was rear-ended by a car whose driver failed to brake at a traffic light. This was the first time that a self-driving car collision resulted in injuries.
Limitations
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