Experts Say Autonomous Cars Are Unlikely to Master Urban Driving Anytime Soon

After catching the world and the auto industry by surprise with its progress with self-driving cars, Google has begun the latest, most difficult phase of its project – making the vehicles smart enough to handle the chaos of city streets. But while the company describes its work with its typical tight-lipped optimism, academic experts in robotics are cautious about the prospects of fully autonomous vehicles. They estimate it will be decades until they can perform as well as human drivers in all situations – if they ever do at all. Google's cars make extensive use of detailed maps that describe not only roads and restrictions such as speed limits, but the 3-D location of stop lights and curbstones to within inches. The company is now working to make its vehicles capable of seeing and understanding the kind of unexpected obstacles that don't appear on those maps and are particularly common in urban areas, said Chris Urmson, the director of the project, last week.