Google has successfully tested an autonomous car on over 100,000 miles of public roads.
The trial, in San Francisco, was incident-free other than when the test car was shunted from behind at traffic lights.
A safety driver was present should the need have arisen, but the car was left to drive itself using video camera on the roof, radar sensors and a laser to detect other traffic. The routes were pre-agreed with police and designated by by a driver.
The automated cars use video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to “see” other traffic, as well as detailed maps (which we collect using manually driven vehicles) to navigate the road ahead. This is all made possible by Google’s data centers, which can process the enormous amounts of information gathered by our cars when mapping their terrain.
An engineer associated with the project explains that a number of cars had taken part in the trials, which had covered 140,000 miles - including San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.
He added that he believed that the technology had the potential to cut the number of road deaths by as much as half.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/what-were-driving-at.html