Google Robots Now Drive Austin

Google has decided to expand the “habitat” of its small robot cars. Now testing of such systems is being conducted in Austin, Texas. By the way, last year Lexus “self-propelled” cars were also tested here. Previously, Google robots were tested only in Silicon Valley, the current exit beyond its borders is the first for these systems.

Texas law does not allow testing autonomous systems on the road (so far only such laws are available in Nevada, Florida, California, and Michigan), but Google representatives held several talks with the state governor, with the head of police and representatives of the Texas Department of Transportation. The mayor of Austin has already stated that his city is an ideal place to test robotic cars, as innovations are always welcome here. Moreover, the mayor believes that Google cars will help reduce the number of accidents and relieve the load on some sections of city roads. As a result, the corporation managed to agree on testing, now we can wait for a more or less massive appearance of Google cars in the center of Austin in a couple of weeks.

In Austin, another model with an autonomous control system, the Lexus RX450h, is still being tested. But this is a machine that was originally created to work with a human driver, and then a computer system was added to the finished car.

Interestingly, the corporation has to guarantee the presence of a person inside the car - if something goes wrong, this person takes control. The model of the self-driving car in question is devoid of a steering wheel, but it has to be installed in test samples for safety reasons.


Photo: Tony Avelar / AP

By the way, now Google cars have rolled over more than 2.5 million kilometers, and during all this time very few accidents happened. Google speaks of 15 accidents, and in all cases the culprit was not a robot car, but drivers of completely ordinary cars that violated traffic rules.

As for cars, their speed is about 40 kilometers per hour. At the same time, car capacity is a maximum of two people. There are no airbags, but the car tries to stay at a distance from passing cars and other objects. The control system of such a car responds to all kinds of obstacles, including people or animals running across the road, things lying on the road, branches and the like. A computer system monitors traffic lights and responds accordingly when switching signals.