The much-anticipated Google’s self-driving car will hit the roads this January after the technology titan confirmed that the previous prototypes have all been incorporated to one system.
The company announced the car will be driven over the Christmas period on a test track. It would then head out onto the roads of northern Carlifonia.
The search engine giant posted a picture of the bubble-shaped car on its website with the message: “The vehicle we unveiled in May was an early mockup – it didn’t even have real headlights! “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.
“We’ve now put all those systems together in this fully functional vehicle – our first complete prototype for fully autonomous driving.” The self-driven car will have a safety driver onboard to “oversee the vehicle for a while longer, using temporary manual controls as needed”. Google announced its plans to build its own vehicles in May after adapting existing models with its self-driving technology.
Once the test drive is completed, the tech company will make 100 prototype cars that will be operated using two simple buttons – go and stop – and navigate using GPS, sensors and camera data.
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