To me, there are only a few "out there" technologies that have a chance to change everything. 3-D printing is at the top of my list, but that's going to be a while before it really takes off. The others are robotics (also taking a while) and self-driving cars.<p>If Google can work through not only the technical but the social and legal problems associated with fully auto-drive cars, it could literally change the world overnight. Instead of driving cars being a time sink, it could change into something along the lines of being in a room that goes places. You could sleep, read, play games, or otherwise occupy your time. It would literally give the nation tens of billions of hours in added productivity time. It could make the elderly more independent, eliminate drunk-driving, and a lot more. Very cool stuff.
I think this is one of those technologies that will go from "science fiction" to "everyone uses one every day" very, very quickly.<p>Until a few months ago, I had no idea that the technology was as far along as it is; it seems like they've cracked the hard problems already. That means it's a social problem now - and there's reason to believe that the biggest motivator in adoption of automobile technology (and related public policy) is the insurance industry. As soon as these cars are statistically safer than human drivers (and my expectation is that they may <i>already</i> be safer - humans are crap at driving) then there will be strong incentives to get them to the public.
Since a lot of the discussions here are about the benefits of autonomous cars compared to other solutions, I'd like to point out an excellent Quora question on the matter: <a href="http://www.quora.com/Transportation/Why-do-we-want-self-driving-cars-rather-than-better-mass-transit" rel="nofollow">http://www.quora.com/Transportation/Why-do-we-want-self-driv...</a><p>I am a roboticist who works on autonomous vehicles for mining applications, and I've always thought the two least obvious advantages are that a) autonomous vehicles will increase the utility of a single vehicle to the point that owning multiple vehicles becomes less necessary, and b) autonomous vehicles will increase the utility of road networks such that their existing capacity will be sufficient for far longer than expected under manned vehicle assumptions.
Google should work with Tesla Motors to implement it in one of their models at least. I figure people who are the early adopters for all-electric vehicles might be early adopters for self-driving cars, too.
Police drones that can fly around your city for two days straight, self-driving cars that can crawl neighborhoods to take photos....<p>I am not sure I am ready or happy about this future. Maybe I am just old.
I saw a Google Self-Driving car on 280 in the Bay Area about a month ago with 2 people in it. I guess they already have the license for California?<p>As a side note, I (illegally) took a video of it with my iPhone as I passed by it, but when I tried uploading it to Facebook it was denied twice because I used a copyrighted song as the background (Cars by Devo and then an obscure version of Crosstown Traffic by Living Color, which I thought would have passed the algos but I guess not).
Why does Google do it?<p>I can't understand what business purpose it could possibly serve for Google. And if it is just a side R&D project, how come the shareholders do not revolt?
Orthogonal to this trend, is a probable reduction in how much we actually travel every day. Would it make sense if a kid was dropped to a very nearby school, where learning happens by interacting with teachers in close proximity as well other teachers on another continent(not just cheaper ones). It may even be a micro school where just 25 students from the neighborhood attend and have a weekly meetup on a large campus. As technology improves, that actual benefit of being at particular spot diminishes. Of course some professions like nursing/sales may need direct presence every day. For many others occasional meetups would more than suffice. Would we not drive a lot lesser if technology allows us a lot more seamless communication?
It's good that Nevada is facilitating this, I'm expecting that industry lobby groups that will be affected by this (truck drivers, taxis, car companies without this technology, insurance companies perhaps) will throw everything they have at shutting this down so it's good to see that at least local governments are open to the idea. It means that it stays in the USA rather than Google launching it in a country more open to the idea.
The google car is great, but I wonder when will they be able to drive with the visible spectrum only, like humans do. No radar, laser range finder, GPS, or pre-mapping the roads. Just the view through the windshield on an unknown road, we can all do that. I would say keep all the other devices if they improve safety, but to really be a human-level driver I think you need to be able to do without them in a pinch.
I'm surprised no-one talks about the psychological and social implications of (serious or lethal) accidents caused by autonomous cars. However rare, I think these will set back their adoption by years because people will be too scared to sit in a machine that makes decisions on its own. Decisions that, when wrong, can kill them and they can do nothing about it.
This reminds me, even though the technology isn't as cool as Google's cars, of the Phileas Bus in The Netherlands, which also drives by itself, which I sit in daily - see: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phileas_(public_transport)" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phileas_(public_transport)</a>
Man I can't wait for this to become mature enough that cars can drive themselves without anyone "behind the wheel". I've never learnt to drive, and I would get a Zipcar membership the DAY that happened.
I already imagine a scene where the 2 people, that are suppose to sit in the car, are having a coffee break, and the car starts driving off without them :)
One negative about the self-driving car approach which is inherent to the approach is that most of the hard problems it has to solve come about from the fact that the driving environment is so chaotic, open and uncontrolled. Weather. Pedestrians. Jaywalkers. Animals. Kids. Shopping carts. Bad objects on the road. Other vehicles, many of which are human-driven. Or perhaps automated as well, but malfunctioning.<p>The obvious alternative approach is to create a transport system where the environment is more uniform, controlled, closed, stable. For example, a system of underground tunnels or above-ground tubes. With some kind of train or individual cabins that can move within it. Like subways but more advanced, efficient and end-to-end. Imagine a single common inter-locked system that everyone could use to do both their local daily commutes, and long distance travel, and round trips to orbital stations (via rides in carrier ships like Virgin Galactic is planning, or something like a space elevator.) There is one particular project like this that I've heard of, that has these qualities, called Evacuated Tube Transport. I like the idea of it. It sounds elegant and efficient and scalable. But has some challenges of its own. (Last mile access, industry pushback, safety/failsafe in the face of emergency situations, etc.) There's a specific company called ET3 which is supposedly trying to flesh out and build an implementation of it.
this plus the recent Planetary Resources launch, plus the upcoming SpaceX rendezvous with the ISS are all pretty exciting milestones. some folks out there are pushing the human race forward. not just making trivial fadish photo sharing websites, etc.