It
is a ‘moonshot’ project, a vision of the future, with no steering
wheel, gears or brakes – a vehicle so sophisticated it can negotiate
traffic entirely by itself, read road signs, change lanes, and even
execute emergency stops. It’s no exaggeration to say that the Google car
could transform our everyday lives, and I have just become the first
Briton, in fact the first person from outside America, to ‘drive’ it.
The
market in autonomous cars is developing fast, and our own Government
has already announced pilot tests in three cities starting next year.
But this futuristic Google prototype is streets ahead of what any other
manufacturer is offering so far. Its curved edges are practical as well
as visually appealing, designed to allow the lasers, sensors and cameras
mounted on top of the car in a rotating casing known as a ‘lidar’ to
have optimal vision around the vehicle.
The ‘eyes’ are headlights. The ‘nose’ is a laser sensor and radar.
If it wants a good view of what is coming up, it bounces a beam beneath the car ahead and takes
a look.
The
car’s body is made from lightweight polycarbonate. The windscreen is a
flexible thick plastic that bends to the touch. The bonnet is soft foam
that would minimise the impact in the unlikely event, according to
Google, of a collision.
To navigate
the road ahead, the car uses a combination of video cameras, radar
sensors, lasers, GPS and the most detailed 3D maps ever compiled. ‘The
maps even show the height of the kerb,’ explains Chris Urmson, 38, a
softly spoken bear of a man who leads the self-driving car team. ‘They
are constantly being updated to show road works and other variables.’
Google
believes driverless cars could eventually cut the number of road deaths
in half. ‘Everything is designed to minimise injury in the event of an
accident,’ he continues. ‘Nothing can ever be 100 per cent
accident-proof but we truly believe this vehicle can and will save
lives.’
THE
car has not yet been on public roads. In California, all drivers must
be able to take ‘immediate physical control’ of a vehicle for it to be
able to travel on the state’s roads. The car will be allowed in ‘real’
traffic in a few weeks’ time, when it will go on trials with a safety
driver and a steering wheel.
So my test
takes place in a car park at Google’s sprawling Mountain View campus –
known as the Googleplex – in the heart of Silicon Valley, California. My
vehicle is ‘summoned’ via a mobile phone. Google’s vision is that
customers will share a driverless car which will be ordered via an app.
‘The
car will pick you up, take you where you want to go and then can go off
and do errands like pick up your dry-cleaning, freeing you to do other
things,’ Urmson says.
I
step inside and sink into soft Hermes orange leather seats. It is
surprisingly spacious, uncluttered by the normal ‘car’ things like
pedals, a steering wheel and handbrake. Instead there are two buttons –
green for Go and red for Stop.
There
is an oblong flatscreen in front of me which shows the time, date,
temperature and a computer-generated image of the road ahead. Beneath
the high-tech screen is a storage bay for luggage.
I hit the Go button and take off. The electric engine purrs into life, taking me to a top speed of 25mph.
The
car skilfully navigates sharp turns and potential hazards of parked
cars and pedestrians who wander in and out of the roadway.
It
‘senses’ corners and slows down automatically before speeding up into a
straight. The sensation is surreal. Stationary vehicles and pedestrians
show up on the screen as ‘box’ shapes. At one point we accelerate down a
straight when Urmson suddenly steps out in front of the car… and it
automatically slams on the breaks and comes to a controlled halt. It’s
eerie, impressive and utterly captivating. After a few minutes it all
starts to feel normal. As the car drives itself I open a computer and
answer email. I become oblivious to the outside world. I answer my phone
and do some work. I feel perfectly safe. Then I hit the Stop button and
my journey into the future comes to a gentle halt.
While
the prototype has no official name, those working on the car have
dubbed it Firefly. During my two days at the Googleplex, I also hear it
referred to as the ‘bubble’ or ‘bobble’ car and also ‘koala’ because of
its distinctive grey-and-white livery.
One employee calls it ‘Bert’ because of its resemblance to the Muppet of the same name on the children’s TV show Sesame Street.
A
further 100 Google bubble cars are being built which will be
test-driven by a hand-selected group in the near future. ‘The car you
are sitting in is the very first incarnation,’ Urmson explains, pointing
at the rudimentary seatbelts and lack of side windows. ‘We are building
a more polished version.’
Because
the car does away with human error, Google believes there will
eventually be free-flowing ‘streams’ of vehicles all ‘talking’ to each
other. Distances between the cars will be reduced to a few inches and
traffic signals could be abolished as computerised cars ‘flow’ in a
carefully choreographed pattern, speeding up travel and negating the
biggest cause of accidents… flawed human beings who drink, make mistakes
and use mobile phones behind the wheel.
It’s
unclear when the Google prototype will come to Britain, but
self-driving cars are about to become a reality in the UK after the
Government passed legislation allowing them to take to the roads in
2015.
Conventional
car-makers such as Audi and Mercedes are developing their own vehicles
in a race with Google to control what could be, potentially, an industry
worth billions.
Google
itself has been developing self-driving cars since 2009 and has a fleet
of 24 modified Toyota Lexus hybrids which are a common sight around
Mountain View, a tech town of 75,000 people, an hour south of San
Francisco. These cars have clocked up 700,000 miles of autonomous
driving. There has been only one accident, when a car was rear-ended
while the vehicle was in manual drive, and that was down to human error.
Urmson takes me for a spin in one. ‘Look, no hands,’ he says, waving
both arms in the air.
A
Google colleague sits in the passenger seat monitoring the drive on a
laptop. The screen shows what the car is ‘seeing’. A yellow line shows
our route. Pedestrians show up in red. Other cars are purple boxes.
Google’s engineers have developed algorithms that ‘predict’ how traffic
will act. The car slows as a vehicle overtakes. It slows again as a
cyclist approaches traffic cones and swerves outwards. As we merge to
join a motorway there is a hair-raising moment when another driver
accelerates from behind and suddenly swerves in front of us. ‘Manual
control,’ the car says in a soothing female voice, and in a split second
Urmson assumes control. ‘The car just did what it was supposed to do,’
he says reassuringly.
But
a human is not always needed in an emergency. One automated Lexus
stopped inexplicably as it was being driven down a country road. Seconds
later a deer jumped in front of it. The car had ‘seen’ the deer’s
movement in thick trees before the driver had.
But
won’t some people always want the thrill of a Ferrari, I ask Urmson?
‘Yes,’ he says, ‘and there will always be a place on the roads for
manually driven cars. But in terms of the masses, we believe most people
would rather use the time spent driving doing something more
interesting.’
Stepping
out of the latest Google car, I am reluctant to leave. There is
something instantly addictive about it – plus it allows technology to
improve on something which is inherently flawed. The fact that it is as
cute as a button is a bonus.
Now, if they would just add a vanity mirror…
Culled From DailyMail
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