Google Self Driving Car Prototype Revealed

By Ganesh

Updated: Wednesday, May 28, 2014, 17:29 [IST]

Google has been working on self driving cars for quite some time now and the search giant has also demonstrated the still-developing technology in test cars.

However, till now, these have been donor cars, modified to run as autonomous vehicles. What Google has now done is different because it has built its own car specifically for the purpose and demonstrated it.

Built by Google and its partners, the Santa Clara, California based tech giant's first ever car is a small ‘bug' that has no steering wheel, no accelerator and no brakes.

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Everything is instead controlled by software and mechanics within the car. The only control inside the car is a large start and stop button.

The interior has been kept bare minimum as well, with just two seats for passengers, space for personal belongings and a screen to show the route the car is taking.

As a safety measure, the speed has been limited to 25 mph (about 40 km/h, but Google cofounder Sergey Brin said that future production model be capable of reaching 100 mph (160 km/h).

The prototype Google self driving car was showcased during the Recode Code Conference in Palos Verdes, California. Kara Swisher, Editor of Recode, who sat in the car equated the experience to riding a Disney ride. Brin, on the other hand, termed the ride as relaxing.

It was inspiring to start with a blank sheet of paper and ask, "What should be different about this kind of vehicle?" We started with the most important thing: safety. They have sensors that remove blind spots, and they can detect objects out to a distance of more than two football fields in all directions, which is especially helpful on busy streets with lots of intersections," said Chris Urmson, director of the Self-Driving Car Project,

Testing will continue of course, with test drivers with manual controls. Google plans to build as many as 100 such prototype vehicles soon. If all safety issues are sorted out, we could see Google's self driving cars on road within a couple of years.

"If all goes well, we'd like to run a small pilot program here in California in the next couple of years. We're going to learn a lot from this experience, and if the technology develops as we hope, we'll work with partners to bring this technology into the world safely," Urmson said.