In the next 5-10 years experts say we’ll be seeing driverless cars on our roads and highways. They’ll be stopping for deer, and parallel parking themselves. One company at the center of this paradigm shift is based in a small town near Charlottesville. Sandy Hausman paid it a visit and filed this report.
If you’re a baby boomer, you might have been hoping that cars would fly by now – fulfilling the promise of George Jetson and his family. In truth, we’re on the cusp of something almost as exciting.
Garrett Moore is an engineer who’s test driving software developed by Perrone Robotics, a company based in Crozet.
“You can see the car taking control of the steering. You hear it releasing the brake, and we’re off,” he says, demonstrating a technology that's been in the works for more than a decade.
Garrett sits back as the car navigates a track built by Perrone on the site of an old lumber yard. Using high quality GPS, radar and lidar, his Lincoln hybrid cruises along, brakes for a stop sign, then turns right. Garrett points to his iPad.
"Right now we’re seeing GPS waypoints the car is using," he explains. "The GPS antenna is on the roof. The lidar on the front of the vehicle is scanning for obstacles and will react accordingly."
Sensors on the front and side will signal road signs, lights and obstacles. Whether it’s a a pedestrian or a deer, the car knows what to do.
"It can stop on a dime," Garrett says. "That's the beauty of having the reflexes of software instead of the reflexes of a human being."
Which is why experts believe self-driving cars will be safer than what’s now on the road.
"The rate of fatalities and accidents that occur will dramatically decrease with this technology," says CEO Paul Perrone. "It’s going to have a massive effect on the insurance industry."
He adds, however that this technology does raise questions.
"Should an autonomous vehicle, if faced with the decision of saving the human being on board or driving a busload of children off the side of the road – should it choose the former versus the latter? And who’s making those decisions?"
Autonomous cars could also pose new risks.
"Will pedestrians start to know that these cars are autonomous?" Perrone wonders. "Will they try to trick them or foil them? Is there a dangerous game of chicken that people will begin playing."
It’s also likely to change the face of our cities, according to Louis Nelson, Associate Provost for Academic Outreach at the University of Virginia.
"Will there be sections of the city, parking garages are one example, that we will no longer need?" he asks. "Can we get out ahead of the design of the city, and another fundamental question is will people actually have private vehicles? Does this ultimately lead to the realization that people don’t need to own vehicles, and maybe autonomous cars start functioning more like public transportation services in the heart of the city, where it would be easier to call one like you do with an Uber today."
Those and other questions will be on the agenda Saturday, September 30th when the Darden School of Business hosts a free symposium on self-driving cars. The public is invited, the lunch is free, and you can see Perrone’s original driverless vehicle – a silver egg-shaped dune buggy that was custom-built for the first Darpa Grand Challenge across the Mojave Desert more than a decade ago.
Conference participants may also catch a glimpse of newer models as they drive themselves around the building. If you plan to attend the conference, please register at
http://provost.virginia.edu/academic-outreach/driverless-future.