Self driving car coming to a theater near you

Updated July 2014. (Dutch below) On this page i collect info on self diving card. Self driving cars are driving public roads for long. Google published about it back in 2010: Google had been testing self driving cars on public roads for several months before anyone noticed! Good tactic. What would happen if you would test this kind of technology in a lab and publicly announce you want to test them on public roads? A lot of protest, fear etc. Now you can say: no worry people, they have been amongst you for months :-).

The below video's show the cars, which where then thought to be StreetView-cars (when the guy in the autonomous car sees he's being filmed, he pushes the break, indicating he didn't want to be filmed ;-)). And you can read more about this on TechCrunch, and on the same site about previous sightings.


In Feb 2014 Dutch TV "VPRO Tegenlicht" aired a documentary, "How do we get rid of the car", about changing transportation; it features autonomous vehicles, besides things like electric vehicles, sharing services like ZipCar and Uber, changing thoughts and emotions relating to car and possessing a car etc.

A Dutch insurance company has an ad proclaiming it is ready, as is technology, mocking that the public might not:


Do you wonder why we would want self driving cars? What about this blind person:

Update okt 2011: This video shows more about how the Google cars work and what they see. Fun, at 13:00, is how these cars can even race and stuff :-).
An Italian Vislab team has also been testing a self driving car on public roads.


And autonomous vehicles are tested in German traffic (at 3:20 in the video, you get to see it is actually driving autonomous, the project is called AutonoMos):

The German team has published a video that actually shows somebody with a touch-device with GPS signaling the car to pick him up and bring him to a destination!


Funny is that the German team has applied technology of their autonomous car to wheel chairs, and in their project-page they mention BCI-interfaces (Brain Computer Interfaces). I have a nice item about BCI here.

Update sept 2011: read about this autonomous tractor (Dutch article) that is able to manoeuvre a piece of land and work it while the farmer can do other work .

Update feb 2012: Mercedes is expected to launch a self steering car people (with enough money, i bet) can actually buy and use on the street. And Nevada has approved regulations for autonomous vehicles.

Update sept 2013: Mercedes announced a Mercedes Benz S500 has driven 100km on normal German roads:


Update nov 2013: the Netherlands tested their Davi project on a public road in the Netherlands.

Update dec 2013: Sweden will start a test with Drive Me in 2017 driving 100 Volvo's in and around the city of Goteborg.

Update jul 2014: a self driving car is believed to been spotted on Dutch roads.

A famous step in the self-driving car history is the Darpa Grand Challenge initiative, where self driving cars were tested on closed driving ranges.


And in 2004, there was this dessert Grand challenge:


So: when will this be available in cars we can actually buy? And: do you dare to drive the '1st' generation :-)?

So Knight Rider times actually will become true, well, for the autonomous driving part that is :-).


(Dutch)
Zoals je kunt zien in de bovenstaande video's, blijkt het snel te gaan met zelfsturende / zelfrijdende autonome 'robot' auto's. Google blijkt al maanden zulke auto's op publieke wegen te testen. En kennelijk zonder veel ongelukken! Een Italiaans team doet een test met een zelfsturende auto in een rit van Italie naar China (via openbare wegen). En in de andere video's zie je dat daarvoor in het kader van Darpa al testen werden gedaan met zelfsturende auto's in (1st) de woestijn, en (later) afgezette nagemaakte stads-achtige omgevingen (incl stoplichten, stopstrepen, ander verkeer etc).