Our autonomous future: How driverless cars will be the first robots we learn to trust

In March 2015, an Audi SQ5 began its nine-day journey from the Golden Gate Bridge to midtown Manhattan. The 3400-mile drive involved the normal obstacles: construction, highways, city driving, lane-passing. Until recently, the concept of a driverless car seemed like the stuff of science fiction. But much has changed in just a few short years as the technology behind autonomous vehicles has taken huge strides. The cross-country driving Audi, powered by technology from Delphi, drove in autonomous mode 99 percent of the time. The US federal government has also begun to embrace autonomous vehicles as a coming reality. In February 2016, the US Department of Transportation (US DOT) announced that it considers the AI powering Google's driverless cars (which have already logged hundreds of thousands of self-driven miles) officially a "driver"--marking a groundbreaking moment in the history of transportation.