The vision of Google for driverless cars is nearly a reality.
Google revealed its first "fully functional" prototype of its self-driving car on Monday. The car is almost similar to the one revealed last May. Google was planning to test it on public roads in Bay Area this New Year.
Google said in its statement, "We're going to be spending the holidays zipping around our test track, and we hope to see you on the streets of Northern California in the New Year."
The project was originally announced last 2010, it's Google X research and development lab initiative. Other daring projects that the laboratory is working on are Google Glass, a smart eyewear, and cancer detection nanoparticles. The Google expands aggressively outside its usual search businesses and look for alternative income streams.
"Since then, we've been working on different prototypes-of-prototypes, each designed to test different systems of a self-driving car—for example, the typical "car" parts like steering and braking, as well as the "self-driving" parts like the computer and sensors," written by Google in an update. "We've now put all those systems together in this fully functional vehicle—our first complete prototype for fully autonomous driving."
Google noted manual controls will be used by the company, like brake and gas pedal, when testing the car to comply with the rules of California's Department of Motor Vehicles. "Our safety drivers will continue to oversee the vehicle for a while longer, using temporary manual controls as needed while we continue to test and learn."
The company said last week that they are looking for auto manufacturers to be its partner to manufacture driverless cars to be available in the market in the next 5 years.
"Our safety drivers will continue to oversee the vehicle for a while longer, using temporary manual controls as needed while we continue to test and learn."
Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, had predicted that the self-driving cars will be available to the public by 2017, and they are working hard to succeed.