It seems as though Google is ready to take the next step in the development of its self-driving cars — bringing them to the streets.
The company announced that its self-driving car will begin making test runs on public roads in Northern California this summer. While it will be driving autonomously, a driver will be in the car at all times with controls to take over the driving if necessary.
"We've been running the vehicles through rigorous testing at our test facilities, and ensuring our software and sensors work as they're supposed to on this new vehicle. The new prototypes will drive with the same software that our existing fleet of self-driving Lexus RX450h SUVs uses," said the company in a blog post. "That fleet has logged nearly a million autonomous miles on the roads since we started the project, and recently has been self-driving about 10,000 miles a week. So the new prototypes already have lots of experience to draw on — in fact, it's the equivalent of about 75 years of typical American adult driving experience."
Google is taking safety extremely seriously with these cars. Apart from the fact that the cars will include a gas and break pedal along with a removable steering wheel, the speed of the car will also be capped at 25 miles per hour. Not only that, but as mentioned, the decision to bring the car to the road for testing comes after years of testing it privately.
While Google is advancing in the development of the car, it is unlikely that a self-driving Google car will be released to the public anytime soon. The company says that the technology will likely be ready for the public by 2020, however, even that is just a goal. In addition to technological requirements, legal restrictions may also prevent completely autonomous vehicles from being released anytime soon.
The news comes shortly after Google admitted that the cars have been involved in a total of 11 accidents over the six years that the company has been testing the cars, but Google reiterated that only a handful of times were the cars driving themselves, and in not one scenario was the technology at fault, but rather the other driver involved in the accident was at fault. All the accidents were minor and there were no injuries.
Google's goal for the immediate future is to gauge how people on the road react to the cars and see how the cars react to more challenging situations like construction and heavier traffic.
