Driverless 2

(cont'd)

So Google is not a car company but it's engaged in a "car project" to build a car that drives without a driver. How to do that?  It's complicated. The car will correctly handle a ridiculous number of variables, like a woman in a wheelchair chasing ducks across the road. 

Google's technical director of that project explains his approach in the TED talk below. It goes beyond just improving driver-assistance systems (like "collision mitigation braking") - which is the approach of the car makers. In Urmson's mind, that's like trying to fly by getting better and better at jumping.

Urmson thinks there's a "transformative opportunity" here to go beyond driver-assistance systems to fully driver-less. Why try something so challenging? Safety. He says that the rate at which cars crash today (with human drivers) would be, in the airline business, like a 737 crashing every work day. 

In 2013, they first tested it with "Googlers" who didn't work for the car project. "Something awesome happened. Every one of them told us they loved it!"