Google’s driverless car is now «fully functional»

News: Google has updated its prototype self-driving vehicle to make it road worthy, adding headlights, a steering wheel and a brake pedal to comply with road rules in California. Top: the new prototypeAlthough Google has released few details of the updated design, it features similar in-built sensors designed to detect objects up to two football-field lengths away in all directions that were included in the earlier design. «We’re unwrapping the best holiday gift we could’ve imagined: the first real build of our self-driving vehicle prototype,» said Google in a statement published via its own social network G+. Other driverless vehicles featured on Dezeen recently include Audi’s autonomous racing car, which is programmed to carry passengers around a track at breakneck speeds, and Tesla’s Model SD that could soon be «summoned» by owners to pick them up autonomously. The company was also forced to change its original design after the California department of motor vehicles introduced new rules, requiring all vehicles on its roads to have a steering wheel and brake pedal. Google is currently testing its latest self-driving vehicle on a track but hopes to commence street testing in California in the new year. «Since then, we’ve been working on different prototypes-of-prototypes, each designed to test different systems of a self-driving car — for example, the typical ‘car’ parts like steering and braking, as well as the ‘self-driving’ parts like the computer and sensors.»
This image: The «mockup» Google displayed in May. «The vehicle we unveiled in May didn’t even have real headlights,» said Google.