Cars are starting to drive themselves. “Driver assistance” features—such as lane maintenance, adaptive cruise control, automatic braking and parking—are featured in some current model cars. Both traditional automobile manufacturers and technology companies, most notably Google, are developing more fully autonomous cars.
The new automotive technology will have three trajectories: the incremental addition of increasingly sophisticated driver assistance features to traditional automotive technology; the introduction of vehicles with operator controls that are designed to be fully autonomous in at least some driving situations; and the introduction of vehicles that do not have operator controls. The first two options are different paths to the same goal: a car that can drive itself much of the time, but that needs an operator as backup. These cars will be versatile. Under operator control, these cars can be driven anywhere and in any driving conditions. Under automated control, the cars will be able to drive themselves in many locations and a range of driving conditions. The third option—the purely robotic car—will probably be restricted to a narrower range of geographic locations: surface streets in urban downtowns and suburban locations with a high concentration of technology companies will likely be the initial venues for street-legal robots.
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