Google self-driving cars set to be tested on public roads

Chris Urmson, director of Google's Self-Driving Car Project, says test vehicles will have drivers on board in the event of an emergency

Google is set to take its self-driving cars away from the test track and onto the roads as the firm looks to bring smart vehicles a step closer to commercial reality.

But importantly, the cars aren't yet being let loose on their own as they'll have a driver on board who can take over should anything go wrong.

"This summer, a few of the prototype vehicles we've created will leave the test track and hit the familiar roads of Mountain View, California, with our safety drivers aboard," Chris Urmson, director of Google's Self-Driving Car Project, wrote in a blog post.

Urmson moved to assure people that the Google self-driving cars have been thoroughly tested behind closed doors and that the computer systems behind them all work as expected.

"We've been running the vehicles through rigorous testing at our test facilities, and ensuring our software and sensors work as they're supposed to on this new vehicle," he said, adding that Google's fleet "has logged nearly a million autonomous miles on the roads since we started the project, and recently has been self-driving about 10,000 miles a week".

Nonetheless, the self-driving cars will have their speed capped at 25mph and Urmson said drivers on board will be able to take control at any time if neccessary.

"During this next phase of our project we'll have safety drivers aboard with a removable steering wheel, accelerator pedal, and brake pedal that allow them to take over driving if needed," he said.

Google is particularly interested to learn how members of the public react to the vehicles and how the cars cope with being in busier environments than the test track.

"We're looking forward to learning how the community perceives and interacts with the vehicles, and to uncovering challenges that are unique to a fully self-driving vehicle - e.g. where it should stop if it can't stop at its exact destination due to construction or congestion," Urmson said.

"In the coming years, we'd like to run small pilot programmes with our prototypes to learn what people would like to do with vehicles like this," he added.

However, while the arrival of Google self-driving vehicles might be good for businesses looking to reduce haulage costs, Mark Bishop, professor of cognitive computing at Goldsmiths, University of London, and chair of the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour, warned that the technology could put many in the automotive and delivery sectors out of work.

"It's quite obvious that companies like Google, Apple, BMW, Mercedes and Audi are putting a lot of money into autonomous vehicles because they see the potential to automate transport distribution networks. There are an awful lot of people who are employed in transport distribution," said Bishop

"Shipping goods from Leeds to London, if you can get that done by a robot delivery engine, then you're cutting out a significant cost of your product distribution," he continued. "I think we'll see automated delivery vans within 10 years."