The New York Times reports on a driverless car symposium at Santa Clara University.

Highlights of the article suggest that:

• Driverless car legislation will be introduced in California soon.
• Driverless cars will restore the USA’s car industry “primacy”
• Some scholars have concerns driverless cars will be too “polite” to compete with aggressive human drivers.
• AI may need to improve for driverless cars to recognise police etc
• Rumours are that Google hopes to have autonomous taxis by 2013 or 2014.

EDIT: In regards to policing driverless cars, presumably the car AI could be WiFi enabled possibly allowing communication via instant messaging with police, transport authorities, traffic lights etc.

Better Place has, after several years of anticipation, delivered its first vehicles – all Renaults, all 100% electric. This is quite exciting as there was an emerging feeling that Better Place was nothing more vapourware. The creation of battery switch-out stations is the perfect idea when it comes to convincing customers to adopt electric vehicles.

“Just four years ago, almost to the today – we stood together with President Peres and Carlos Ghosn and announced our commitment to break the world’s dependence on oil, starting in Israel. We were a small start-up with a powerful vision and what many called an audacious plan. Today, on our fourth anniversary, that audacious plan reached another important milestone: the delivery of the first tens of cars to employees in Israel. As you can see in the attached photos, today was a celebration, followed by a joint drive of all cars through the streets of Israel.”

More Information + Photos Here

Video:

(http://youtu.be/bn1XibHtq9U if you can’t see the video)

The car can travel up to 150 miles on a charge and will cost $37,000. This is a reasonable price for what you will be getting. It just goes to show that the main obstacle to widespread adoption is the lack of ability to charge batteries quickly (or swap them.)

More info at Slashdot

hat tip: automobile mag

Can’t see the video? Follow this URL http://youtu.be/DgIAs3sBxCQ

Edit: What’s interesting is that the sensors on this car seem to be seamlessly integrated into the design as opposed to the bulky lasers mounted on Google’s Prius.

In a surprising move, and a blow to the nascent driverless car industry, Sebastian Thrun has resigned from Stanford to take up a position with Udacity, an online educator.

While his website is currently down, this article from i-programmer goes into more detail.

While it’s a shame that the driverless car industry has lost its most prominent evangelist, there’s no doubt more waiting in the wings.

The New York Times has been an avid follower and publisher of news about driverless cars.

Today they bring us an article about the recent day-long symposium about the legal implications of autonomous vehicles, held at Santa Clara University on January 20.

All the typical heavy-hitters of driverless car acadamia were present.

Key quotes:

O. Kevin Vincent, of the NHTSA putting some brakes on : “We think it’s a scary concept for the public. If you have two tons of steel going down the highway at 60 miles an hour a few feet away from two tons of steel going in the exact opposite direction at 60 miles an hour, the public is fully aware of what happens when those two hunks of metal collide and they’re inside one of those hunks of metal. They ought to be petrified of that concept.” Note that he is talking about something that has been in existence for the better part of a century.

Sven Beiker, of Stanford, raises an interesting question : “Everybody might be bending the rules a little bit,” he said. “This is what the researchers are telling me — because the car is so polite it might be sitting at a four-way intersection forever, because no one else is coming to a stop.”

Gary Marchant, from Arizona Law: “Why would you even put money into developing it?” he asked. “I see this as a huge barrier to this technology unless there are some policy ways around it”

More details here.

First Nevada legalised driverless cars, now Florida and  Hawaii are considering doing the same.

Edit:

Here’s the legislation

It requires the “Director of transportation, in consultation with the insurance commissioner and the examiner of drivers of each county,” to “adopt rules in accordance with chapter 91 providing for the operation of autonomous motor vehicles on highways within the State.”

Hat Tip – Bryant Walker Smith

Wired’s Tom Vanderbuilt has a test drive of the S-Class Mercedes, which utilizes the Pre-Safe braking system to avoid potential collisions.

“And so with loose reins I let the car do its work. It is effective, if slightly mechanistic. When a car ahead slows to turn, for example, the Mercedes fails to recognize that the vehicle will soon be out of my way, so we brake too much for my taste and then accelerate from a dead stop. The car’s lane-departure warning feature, which alerts drivers when they drift out of their lane, doesn’t work if the lane and edge markings are worn away—a common phenomenon in our infrastructure-challenged country. ”

While we’re loathe to post up the dime-a-dozen feature articles on the current progress of driverless car technology, this article is a fantastically detailed summary of progress to this point – good reading for anyone wanting to get up to speed and quickly.

Sven Beiker, the executive director at the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford Univertsity, is predicting that driverless cars will be do-gooders that cause fits of rage from fellow road-users.

“The road to a future where we jump in our cars, enter a destination, and let them do the driving could be filled with rage, according to an expert on driverless car technology.

For starters, driverless cars will likely be programmed to obey all traffic laws. They won’t speed and will always come to a complete stop at stop signs, for example.

Throw just a few of those law-abiding robots on roads clogged with 250 million human-controlled cars, and there’s bound to be some shaken fists, or worse.”

Given that a driverless vehicle  developed in China managed to overtake 67 cars on its first publicised test, I doubt we will have to many issues with autonomous cars driving like Aunty Marj, however it’s an interesting thought – doubtless there will be situations where someone takes an exception to something done by the Google Car.

How exactly would a driverless car respond to being tailgated? Or the law to the accidents that result?

The New York Times has an article up today discussing the legal ins and outs of lane-keeping technology.

It’s a read that shows how much of a disconnect there is between the different stages of advance. While Nevada is preparing to regulate driverless cars, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has this to say about lane assist technology – “We believe additional evaluation and research about lane-keeping systems is needed before we can decide whether we should recommend it to the public.”

The main concerns on the part of the manufacturers seem to rest in the litigious nature of the driving public:

““In Europe, the driving population understands that ultimate responsibility remains with the driver,” says Eddy Llaneras of the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. “Here in the U.S., we are inclined to believe the technology will do all the work for us. And if it doesn’t, we’ll sue.”

Read the rest of the article here.