No steering wheel, No brake pedal and No accelerator, and of course, No driver. Just sit back, press the GO button and the car will ride you at 25mph. This prototype driver-less car was recently unveiled by Google and the public had their first ride. In the video above you can see volunteers take a ride in the self-driving car in Mountain View, California
According to Google, the prototype cars have in-built sensors that can detect objects up to two football-field lengths away in all directions and have a speed cap of 25 miles per hour.
We’re planning to build about a hundred prototype vehicles, and later this summer, our safety drivers will start testing early versions of these vehicles that have manual controls. If all goes well, we’d like to run a small pilot program here in California in the next couple of years. We’re going to learn a lot from this experience, and if the technology develops as we hope, we’ll work with partners to bring this technology into the world safely.
In previous projects Google’s self-driving cars has driven hundreds of thousands of miles in California with Lexus SUVs and Toyota Priuses outfitted with a combination of sensors and computers. Those cars have Google-employed “safety drivers” behind the wheel in case of emergency. The new cars would eliminate the driver from the task of driving.
Below is the video of Toyota Prius fitted with Google self-driving system
