Google’s self-driving vehicles have already been cruising around US roads legally since June 29, 2011, when they were officially accepted by the state of Nevada.

These cars use an array of sensors, cameras and connected features in order to “see” the road ahead, look for obstacles and plan their route; this latest video uploaded by Google shows exactly how they do it and how their surroundings are processed.

The internet giant wants to launch its autonomous vehicle on the world stage by 2018, and by that time, they will need to have sorted out all the bugs. Probably pedestrians and cyclists will present the biggest issue for the software to understand, since these road users are less predictable than cars. Driving in the city will be generally much more challenging for the systems to handle than simple, repetitive highway miles.

As the footage shows, though, the system can adapt to any changing situation, and react accordingly, changing its plan/route on the fly, without the passengers detecting that there had been a disturbance.

By Andrei Nedelea

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