Google’s self-driving cars have been given the green light to test these cars on public roads in Mountain View, California this summer.
Project Director Chris Urmson wrote in a company blog post that the prototype vehicles will include a safety driver and will be capped to a maximum speed of 25mph.
“We’re looking forward to learning how the community perceives and interacts with the vehicles,” says Urmson, “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. In the coming years, we’d like to run small pilot programs with our prototypes to learn what people would like to do with vehicles like this.”
These prototypes will be running the same software as used by Google’s self-driving Lexus RX450h fleet, company also says that fleet had logged million miles on road.