PJ Vogt

Like, incredibly uncomfortable.

You would feel like you were in Mario Kart.

Yes, it would feel Mario Kart.

And remember, this is a force.

So it's a physical feeling on your body is exactly the same.

But the contextual awareness of the situation of speeding up to get on the highway versus making a U-turn in a residential street tricks your brain into feeling

opposite about the situation.

And so it turns out the limit for a cul-de-sac is around 0.75.

It's almost three times less than you would be willing to tolerate as you accelerate onto a highway.

And so there were things like that where you couldn't just say humans have specific physical restrictions.

From a forces perspective, the context matters.

And when the context matters, now all of a sudden anything is game.

So things like that is where I spent my time as a researcher trying to figure out, okay, how are we going to make this comfortable for passengers?

All these little problems to solve.

But there was one gift, which was that the team at this point had an overarching goal uniting them.

The DARPA challenge had told them, drive across this patch of desert.

The Larry 1K challenge told them, drive these 10 routes without human intervention.

The specificity of the mission meant they never had to squabble about why they were there.

By 2010, just a year in, the team was really on a roll.

They start knocking out routes.