Last May, the Mountain View giant gave us a very good idea of what its self-driving car was going to look like. That initial model was barely a sketch and didn’t even have traditional physical lights, but today things are different. The first prototype has been completed, and I would venture to say it has a “koala face” — a detail that is definitely not a coincidence.
Beyond the technical side and the ever-present bureaucracy, the self-driving car as a whole faces another big challenge: overcoming human prejudice. The number of accidents directly caused by human drivers is chilling, yet we all know that at the first mistake made by an autonomous system, the entire technology will be called into question. Across the pond, car accidents claim 30,000 lives per year, and the European numbers are not much better. My point is that self-driving cars probably deserve their chance now more than ever. And Google has its own ready, in the form of a final prototype. (The video below is from May.)
The image above makes it look like a toy straight out of a Happy Meal, something that was clearly done on purpose. Its top speed is 25 kilometers per hour, and the basic safety parameters indicate that Google’s self-driving car has a rather cautious drive, which could annoy other drivers. However, the fact that the car has a “face” could moderate the psychological response of the most impatient drivers who dream of running it over. Needless to say, there is still a lot of room to optimize its systems. A critical factor in the self-driving car is correctly interpreting the gestures and movements of pedestrians. Humans can be very erratic when walking, and the integrated sensors have the obligation to accurately read their real intention through all the chaos.
So, we keep waiting. Northern California will be one of the first privileged places to host Google’s self-driving car, and all additional tests will involve remote drivers, using temporary manual controls if a situation (for example, very adverse weather conditions) demands it.
