How Google Car will reshape automotive industry

Google has been working on this self-driving car project since 2005; but even then the idea of self-driving car was not new. The idea already existed as far back as the nineteen-fifties but wasn't possible (picture 1[1]). But serious efforts at developing a driverless car had to wait until 2005, when computer and sensor technology became advanced enough to make the dream possible. Thus in 2005 for the second edition of the DARPA Grand Challenge consisting in an autonomous vehicle race in Mojaves desert, many universities and robotics labs participated to this challenge to test their capability to design such vehicles. If in 2004 for the first edition, no team succeeded in finishing the race, for the second edition, the Stanford university team managed to complete the race (picture 2[2]).