In my opinion this is hands down the most exciting and impactful technology on the horizon.

traffic stats.. accidents, deaths, driver error.. increase in accidents and increase in distraction

the current state of driverless cars - uber in pittsburgh and san fransisco, tesla Every major automanufacturer is investing heavily autonomous driving.

Waymo is Alphabet/Google's driverless car division.. They have driven 2mil miles.

the future of driverless cars

how they work

• Radar sensors all around the car monitor positions of vehicles near by

• video cameras detect traffic lights, read signs, keep track of vehicles and look out for pedestrians and other obstacles.

• lidar sensors (the spinning camera on top) detect edges of the road and identify lane marking by boundig pulses of light off the car surroundings The lidar basically builds a the surround world in 3d.

• Ultrasonic sensors in the wheels detect the positions of curbs and other vehicles when parking

• A central computer analyzes all the data and controls the steering, accelerationg and braking.

• since you all are software engineers we need to talk about the software.

the obstacles - moral/ethical decisions, industries to be hurt, jobs lossed