PJ Vogt

They can do it just fine, provided there's a person inside.

And the challenge is really to take the person out of the driver's seat and replace it by a computer.

That is not a problem of bigger tires.

That's actually really a software problem.

Sebastian Thrun had a dual background, robotics and artificial intelligence, which probably explains his focus here on the robot driver's mind.

He was thinking about something else, too.

The military wanted this tech to replace a relatively small number of drivers in its war zones.

But Sebastian was already imagining something bigger.

What would happen to traffic deaths worldwide if one day everyone had access to a driverless car?

I had experiences of losing people in my life to traffic accidents, and I felt we lost over the million people in the world to traffic accidents.

Wouldn't it be amazing if DARPA invented something that would save a million lives a year?

Chapter 3.

Machine.

Learning.

18 months later, for the second Grand Challenge, DARPA doubled the bounty, $2 million.

This footage is from a PBS documentary called The Great Robot Race, narrated, to my mild joy, by John Lithgow.

Familiar faces have returned.

Chris Urmson, back with the Carnegie Mellon team, this time with two vehicles, Highlander and Sandstorm.

Anthony Lewandowski, back with his motorcycle, which still doesn't work.

He's knocked out in the qualifiers.