Last week saw a little reported milestone in Automotive history when Californian 
Governor Jerry Brown signed through legislation to allow fully automated vehicles on California’s roads.
This took place at Google’s ‘Mountainview’ headquarters where the team have been working on a car which utilizes Google’s ‘Street View’ mapping technology, a number of sensors & some clever software to enable the car to navigate without human intervention. The company has already done over 300,000 miles testing with zero collisions so far.
So why is all of this so important ?? As Highways get increasingly congested it has long been a dream to enable convoys of vehicles to travel nose to tail in close proximity in separate lanes, breaking off as necessary, to reach local destinations.
Robot cars may smack of Sci-Fi but this development could herald a massive social change and a glimpse of the future.
We’ll certainly see more autonomous cars on the roads in the future – but I can see some hurdles to overcome i.e. legislation, safety, security etc