Main content

Driverless Cars

Jack Stewart meets the engineers inventing vehicles that drive themselves, including Google’s new car with no steering wheel or pedals and Stanford University’s Shelley.

Jack Stewart meets the engineers who are building vehicles that drive themselves. He has a ride in Google's driverless car, which has no steering wheel and no pedals. Google's Chris Urmson explains the company's approach to autonomous vehicles.

Jack visits Stanford University's driverless car project where professor Chris Gerdes shows him Shelley, an automated Audi that races around a track at speed as well as a human driver. Chris is collaborating with a philosopher to explore some of the difficult questions around autonomous vehicles, such as who is liable if there's an accident. Is it the human or the car? And ,Jack meets Josh Swirtes whose company, Peloton, is linking trucks together with the idea that they should have fewer accidents.

(Photo: Jack Stewart in Stanford's University X1)

Available now

27 minutes

Last on

Sun 22 Jun 2014 23:32GMT

Broadcasts

  • Mon 16 Jun 2014 18:32GMT
  • Tue 17 Jun 2014 01:32GMT
  • Tue 17 Jun 2014 08:32GMT
  • Sun 22 Jun 2014 23:32GMT

Space

The eclipses, spacecraft and astronauts changing our view of the Universe

The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry

The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry

A pair of scientific sleuths answer your perplexing questions. Ask them anything!

Podcast