The state of Nevada has passed a bill approving driverless cars on its roads. The Assembly Bill 511 is the first such legislation in the country. The Department of Transportation in the state is to now draw up rules to authorize driverless cars.
Driverless cars are being defined by the bill as ones that use artificial intelligence, sensors and global positioning system coordinates to drive itself without the active intervention of a human operator. They will use technologies of lasers, cameras and radar.
The will take effect in March 1, 2012 and the passing of the bill has put the wheels in motion for DMV guidelines. DMV spokesman Kevin Malone said that they were working in implementing law and license. He said that this was all brand new territory and the goal was to move forward.
An effort of Google has seen similar driverless vehicles log more than 140,000 miles in Californian roads. The Stanford University robotics professor Sebastian Thrun, a project leader of the Google process said that almost all driving accidents were caused by human error rather than mistakes by machines.
He said that they would change the capacity of highways by a factor of two or three if we didn't rely on human precision on staying in the lane but on robotic precision, and thereby drive a little bit closer together on a little bit narrower lanes and do away with all traffic jams on highways.
Of course driverless vehicles are ages away from mass production but the researchers working on them believe that they can transform society as profoundly as the internet. Software companies, vehicle manufacturers and universities all are racing to develop technology that will enable the dream to become a common reality.