I made my usual run out to San Francisco on Monday morning. Check out the Google self-driving car that were in front of us as we left San Francisco airport, driving north on highway I-80 to San Francisco. It’s full of gadgets, and it did have a driver in attendance, but his hands were not on the steering wheel. The car made a lane change past a slow vehicle – automatically, I assume – signaling correctly each time before it changed lanes.
[From Wikipedia] The software controlling the car is called Google Chauffeur. Google’s robotic cars are each fitted with about $150,000 in equipment. That’s a 64-beam laser mounted on top, continuously generating a detailed 3D image of the car’s environment.