Centroids: Carnegie-Mellon has two "autonomous cars" on the road in metro Pittsburgh. So far, one, a refitted Cadillac, has logged 20,000 miles of 'driverless' driving on all kinds of streets and highways since 2011. Other universities are also in the midst of developing programs intended to bring about autonomous cars in the near future, including Stanford. GM has a program (besides its underwriting of C-M) that has at least one such car on the road in Michigan. Apparently it is investing hundreds of millions. The Chinese, South Koreans, and Japanese are in a race to see who can bring an autonomous vehicle to market first. Each is also investing the equivalent of hundreds of millions. Other big investors include Google and Uber. Due to hit the road in 2017 is the first 'enhanced cruise control' Cadillac. This is a "connected car" which does not drive itself but has all kinds of features that sense trouble before it happens, that can look ahead around corners, etc, which has a voice module that warns a driver if there are problems ahead. Such connected cars ought to be commonplace in showrooms by 2020. Expectations are that fully autonomous cars will be on the US market by 2025. The Carnegie-Mellon car, so far the most advanced, is second generation. Third generation is almost ready for preliminary tests, I think this means 2017. Second generation is such that a car must be taken for a drive by a human first and only then "learns" what it needs to know to navigate the streets it uses. Gen # 3 will not require such 'coaching.' C-Span has a feature on the subject in which the honcho of the C-M program was interviewed at length, a man named Raj Rajkumar with a more-or-less thick Hindi accent but who is a US citizen. Lots more was covered on the show, but to give you an idea. Billy
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