Google Blog, Friday, May 15, 2015
When we
started designing the world’s first fully self-driving vehicle, our 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, whether by reducing the 94 percent of accidents caused by human error (PDF), reclaiming the billions of hours wasted in traffic, or
bringing everyday destinations and new opportunities within reach of those who
might otherwise be excluded by their inability to drive a car.
Now we’re
announcing the next step for our project: this summer, a few of the prototype
vehicles we’ve created will leave the test track and hit the familiar roads of
Mountain View, Calif., with our safety drivers aboard.
 |
| Our safety drivers will test fully self-driving vehicle prototypes like this one on the streets of Mountain View, Calif., this summer. |
We’ve been
running the vehicles through rigorous testing at our test facilities, and
ensuring our software and sensors work as they’re supposed to on this new
vehicle. The new prototypes will drive with the same software that our existing
fleet of self-driving Lexus RX450h SUVs uses. That fleet has logged nearly a
million autonomous miles on the roads since we started the project, and
recently has been self-driving about 10,000 miles a week. So the new prototypes
already have lots of experience to draw on—in fact, it’s the equivalent of
about 75 years of typical American adult driving experience.
Each
prototype’s speed is capped at a neighborhood-friendly 25mph, and during this
next phase of our project we’ll have safety drivers aboard with a removable steering
wheel, accelerator pedal, and brake pedal that allow them to take over driving
if needed. We’re looking forward to learning how the community perceives and
interacts with the vehicles, and to uncovering challenges that are unique to a
fully self-driving vehicle—e.g., where it should stop if it can’t stop at its
exact destination due to construction or congestion. In the coming years, we’d
like to run small pilot programs with our prototypes to learn what people would
like to do with vehicles like this. If you’d like to follow updates about the
project and share your thoughts, please join us on our Google+ page. See you on
the road!
Posted by
Chris Urmson, Director, Google Self-Driving Car Project
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