4: Google - the 800 pound gorilla

Enter the dragon. Right from the beginning of the DARPA grand challenge days Google was around trying out the self-driving cars as one of the many  moonshots it indulges in. After recruiting Sebastian thurn, Chris Urmson among others it became increasingly feasible. It announced its intention to bring the product to market, changing the moonshot into a feasible business proposition.

Already google is a leader in mapping with its Google maps, earlier known as keyhole. It is the 800 pound gorilla not just because of its enormous engineering talent and universal reach but because it can potentially give its product for free or ridiculously cheap. The $64.4 billion dollars in cash reserve certainly can help in this regard.

The google self driving prototypes have been around quite a while but the amount of data and machine learning that went into this is staggering. Chris Urmson explains this in his TED talk above.

The google car senses the surroundings and is able to identify cars from pedestrians, bikes, and road signs. It is an amazing engineering feat whereby the car examines the road and surroundings and decides when to move, and in what direction.The car needs to be driven around first so that the car maps the environment in detail and notice how a driver has performed in the following conditions. Then it tries to emulate that. The pedestrians, bikes, cars, incoming & ongoing, lane marking, stop signs, and pedestrian crossing data is fed to the car and it learns them eventually. 

There are many who doubt the gradual evolution of autonomous vehicles to self driving and some who declare that a step towards autonomy should be slow paced due to regulatory and liability concerns. The following site by Dr. Alexander Hars proves to be a good resource for people interested in learning more about self driving cars.