IROS gets earful on Google's self-driving cars (w/ video)

The latest overview about these cars was presented recently in a keynote speech at the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in San Francisco. Stanford University professor Sebastian Thrun, who guides the project, and Google engineer Chris Urmson, who is the project’s tech lead, walked the audience through some performance specifics.

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It’s quite possible, however, that some people may find it entirely difficult to believe driverless cars will be a part of the six o clock commute drive home, a part of the wearying ordeal of staying safe from erratic drivers, tricky intersections, and last-second decision makers in neighboring lanes.

At the IEEE event, the Google pair showed footage that makes a convincing case for the advantages of riding in self-driving cars. The audience saw the on-board computer and how it detects other cars, pedestrians, and traffic lights. The video shows also how the car behaves at an intersection. After the light turned green, the car starts to make a turn, but if pedestrians cross, the car yields to them. The car also yields to a man who decides to cross at the last minute. At a four-way intersection, the car yields to other vehicles based on road rules; if other cars do not reciprocate, it advances a bit to show to the other drivers its intention. Without programming that kind of behavior, Urmson said, it would be impossible for the robot car to drive in the real world.

Thrun, who came to work on the Google project from Stanford, has all along hammered home a message that driving accidents are the number one cause of death for young people and many of the accidents are due to human error. Thrun believes that robotics, not humans, can do the better job in making driving decisions and sparing lives.

That does not sound so crazy to the state of Nevada, which earlier this year passed a law authorizing the Department of Transportation to develop rules to govern driverless cars. Nevada’s bill sets the framework for "authorizing... the operation of, and a driver’s license endorsement for operators of, autonomous vehicles."

Thrun and Urmson talk of many challenges ahead in the future of driverless vehicles, including sorting out legal and liability issues. Still, there’s no looking back.

More information: via IEEE Spectrum

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