I sadly feel we'll never have cars that drive themselves.

The first time, ever, one crashes, regardless of the circumstances: "COMPUTER DRIVEN CAR DEATH! DO COMPUTER CARS MAKE YOU UNSAFE?" is shouted from the media rooftops, citizens get outraged, laws are passed, and we're all doomed to sit in traffic and continue to lose many lives to manual driving forever.

One of the key issues for Google, from a corporate strategy standpoint, is "freeing up people's time." Driving is one of last places where we spend significant time awake without being able to use the Internet and hence any of Google's services (except if you use a smartphone, which is now illegal in some states, and in any event isn't an ideal place to be clicking on ads). There is a safety issue here as well. Although using a smartphone while driving is illegal in some states, people are driving while using their smartphones with increasing frequency. We need our Internet "fix."

I am sure this driving technology also taps into several of Google's key capabilities: e.g., programming expertise, its voice recognition technologies, search, its mapping software (Google Maps and Navigation), etc.

Something no one seems to have mentioned: the post is by Sebastian Thrun, a professor at Stanford. His team won the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005 and placed 2nd in the DARPA Urban Challenge in 2007, so he's one of the most experienced people in the world in the field of autonomous driving. He's also done important work in robotics and mapping, two of the key skills needed for autonomous driving.

I didn't realize he was also at Google now, but this is probably good news for everyone, since Google will likely support him better than DARPA could.

Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Thrun

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

Awww.

I liked the idea of waiting to April 1 to announce this, complete with videos of the cars driving.

(Disclaimer, I work for Google and have known about this project for some time. I have no connection to it.)

According to the World Health Organization, more than 1.2 million lives are lost every year in road traffic accidents.

That is an incredible number. 1.2 million out of 7 billion. If the average person lives to age 70, that means that on average, one has a 1.2% chance of dying from a traffic accident.

It's interesting to me that the cars are legal under California law. It means they could theoretically partner with car makers to sell it as an expensive option -- advanced cruise control. Much less scary sounding than automated vehicles. Once you get enough early adopters on the road it seems like the public opinion would likely shift pretty quickly -- is there anything people resent more than driving?

The idea of "highway trains" is promising. Cars are still inefficient - only 1% of the energy they consume is actually used to propel the driver.

It's hard to get too excited about anything involving cars.

This explains Eric Schmidt's "casual" remarks about cars that should drive themselves recently at the TC Disrupt conference ( http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/28/schmidt-on-future/ ).

It would help a lot if every car get connected to GPS and a global network identifies cars that are in the nearby. Now the server should decide how these cars should go. And in addition, there should be an independent regulation in the car itself in case Internet is down.

If every person gets connected to GPS using his mobile phone, then they can be integrated in this complex network reducing the risks of accidents.

The server would also connect with others to check for roads constructions, weather... and decide the best and fastest path to take.

It would be really amazing and complicated. But believing is how we can get these things done.

I've always imagined that there would surely be a way to optimize traffic to the extreme if it was completely automated. For instance, in many circumstances I could see that instead of a set of traffic lights, instead of slowing down, cars could communicate with each-other and adjust their speed accordingly, so that they criss cross each-other perfectly. (think Traffic Rush on iphone/android)

That sort of precision would require a ton of computing power, but Moores Law, the cloud and wireless internet are making that all possible. Exciting stuff!

Considering that San Francisco has arguably the most difficult city streets to drive in the country, I'd say this is no small feat

Why would their technology just lower the death rate instead of eliminating it almost completely?

"In terms of time efficiency, the U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that people spend on average 52 minutes each working day commuting. Imagine being able to spend that time more productively."

You can, it's called taking the bus, and in the process it actually employs some people such as drivers, cleaning personnel, etc.

So we are getting there, at last :)

http://www.paleofuture.com/blog/2007/5/11/disneys-magic-high...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6pUMlPBMQA

I can drive a car with no driver, no driver, no driver... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLUX0y4EptA

Well it's a good song anyway, even if it isn't talking about an AI... yet.

I wonder if there is something that can be done to the actual road to make it more "friendly" to robot vehicles? Roads are constantly being worked on and it would be interesting to attack parts of the problem from that angle.

A few months ago, one of my friends who works for Google told me, "In the next year, Google is going to announce something that will change the world." Is this it?

Robo Prius in 2008: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-10042320-76.html

Is there any information on the algorithms behind this?

For all the sexiness that is the idea of automated cars, there is one fatal flaw: way more people are going to be driving drunk. Yes, eventually, maybe the tech is good enough that it won't matter what state you're in, but for now there should be a human operator there for emergencies; one that is able to respond quickly and isn't intoxicated.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned one of the biggest issues with general acceptance of this system:

Police will be able to force anyone to pull over anywhere, at any time, and for any or no reason.

Even though they can do that now, people still decide to pull over. They are not forced to.

And what if there becomes a database that police forces compile, showing the history of movements of everyone? That database could potentially be leaked. I think the privacy implications of this should get at least some thought.