SAN FRANCISCO: Google has brought its self-driving on public roads in the Silicon Valley city of Mountain on Thursday.
The move comes after Google’s internal testing of the vehicle over the past year and more extensive experience with technology adapted for existing cars.
Google said in a statement that they wanted to understand what it really meant to have self-driving vehicles in the world, both how people in the community perceive and interact with them and what the practical realities were for them in operating and maintaining them.
Prototype cars built from the ground up to get around safely without human drivers join Google’s fleet of Lexus vehicles augmented with sensors and other computing gadgetry to manage autonomously on roads. The self driving cars augmented with sensors and other computing gadgetry to manage autonomously on roads.
Google said that the prototypes would have “safety drivers” who could take over using manual controls if needed. The company said, “We’ve had 20-plus Lexus vehicles driving on Mountain View city streets for the last few years, but the arrival of our new self-driving vehicle prototypes marks the start of a new phase of our project”.
