The Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has approved a license for Google’s self-driving car.
Google’s self-driving car has been a project the company has long been working on, with a motor vehicle already having covered 140,000 test miles in California, including a trip across the Golden Gate bridge.
But Nevada is the first state in the US to approve a self-driven vehicle license.
The specially equipped Toyota Prius is armed with lasers, roof mounted video cameras and radar sensors to help it sense the environment. The car uses Google mapping and other software to get around (see a view from the car’s interior and the navigation system used below).
However,two people are required to sit in the car at all times, and can take control if the computer makes a mistake.
Officials from Nevada DMV have ridden as passengers in the cars “along freeways, state highways and neighbourhoods both in Carson City and the busy Las Vegas Strip” in order to assess the car’s ability to drive safely.
The new self-driving cars will be identified with a special red number plate bearing the infinity symbol.
Bruce Breslow, the Department of Motor Vehicles director, who approved Nevada’s decision, was given a spin in Google’s project. He said: “I sat in the back seat first, looking at the laptop that shows what the vehicle is seeing. My apprehension disappeared after about five seconds. Once I felt confident that the car could see better than I could, they allowed me to get behind the wheel.”
In recent years there has been an increase in driving automation technology such as cruise control, automatic braking systems and self parking. But the driverless car is a large leap ahead of these driver assistance features.
Watch this video from Sebastian Thrun, who helped build Google’s driverless car,explaining how the car works below;
