Alphabet Is Finally Taking the Driver Out of Some of Its Driverless Cars (recode.net)

An anonymous reader shares a report: After almost a decade, Google's parent company Alphabet is getting closer to fulfilling its promise of rolling out cars that can take anyone anywhere without a driver behind the wheel. Alphabet's self-driving car company, Waymo, is introducing truly driverless cars to public roads for the first time, the company's CEO John Krafcik announced today at the Web Summit conference. That means there won't have to be a person sitting in the driver's seat, waiting to take over, and that the car's computer system will complete all parts of the driving task -- though for now, only in some of the company's cars in Phoenix, Ariz. While this move is still geographically limited, it marks the beginnings of Alphabet's driverless future finally becoming a reality. No other company has succeeded in operating a fleet of fully driverless cars on public roads.

Comments

This is coming a lot faster than most think

[SuperKendall]

I've seen other posts on Slashdot before that were dubious we'd see self driving cars in the next 20 years... but it's not even going to be five before they are in use with real people in all sorts of areas, as this article indicates.

There is just too much demand, too much benefit, and SO much effort being put into making self driving cars work. People seem concerned these cars may make mistakes but the benefits are so huge mistakes will be overlooked, because in the end even now they are probably safer than most human drivers, much less after a few more years of effort.

The largest obstacle I see really is how to deal with snow, which can really block up pretty much any kind of sensor. Otherwise the technology to drive correctly has advanced and will continue to advance at a very rapid clip...