On the Road in Mobileye’s Self-Driving Car

On the Road in Mobileye’s Self-Driving Car - NYTimes.com Log In Register Now HelpHome PageToday's PaperVideoMost PopularEdition: U.S. / GlobalSearch All NYTimes.comScienceWorldU.S.N.Y. / RegionBusinessTechnologyScienceEnvironmentSpace & CosmosHealthSportsOpinionArtsStyleTravelJobsReal EstateAutosAdvertise on NYTimes.comAt High Speed, on the Road to a Driverless Future MobileyeAn Audi A7 outfitted with a self-driving system that uses cameras built into the front, back and sides of the vehicle to detect other vehicles, pedestrians, traffic signs and a range of other roadway information.

By JOHN MARKOFFPublished: May 27, 2013 JERUSALEM — Last month, on a freeway from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, I sat in the driver’s seat of an Audi A7 while software connected to a video camera on the windshield drove the car at speeds up to 65 miles an hour — making a singular statement about the rapid progress in the development of self-driving cars.

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While the widely publicized Google car and other autonomous vehicles are festooned with cameras, radar and the laser range finders called lidars, this one is distinctive because of the simplicity and the relatively low cost of its system — just a few hundred dollars’ worth of materials. “The idea is to get the best out of camera-only autonomous driving,” said Gaby Hayon, senior vice president for research and development at Mobileye Vision Technologies, the Israeli company that created the system in the Audi.

The Mobileye car does not offer the autonomy achieved by Google’s engineers. The Google car, which has been tested for more than 500,000 miles in California traffic, will merge onto freeways, drive safely through intersections, make left and right turns, and pass slower vehicles.

By contrast, the Mobileye vehicle is capable only of driving in a single lane at freeway speeds, as well as identifying traffic lights and automatically slowing, stopping and then returning to highway speeds.

But by blending advanced computer vision techniques with low-cost video cameras, the company is demonstrating how quickly autonomous driving can be commercialized. “You cannot have a car with $70,000 of equipment,” said Amnon Shashua, a computer scientist at Hebrew University and a founder of Mobileye, referring to Google’s lidar system, “and imagine that it will go into mass production.”

By MobileyeResearchers in Israel show the capabilities of a self-driving vehicle.

Elon Musk, the automobile and spaceship entrepreneur, recently made headlines by saying much the same thing. Mr. Musk said he was interested in designing self-driving versions of his Tesla automobiles, possibly in partnership with Google, but in an interview with Bloomberg Mr. Musk said lidars were too expensive to be used in production cars. Like Google, Mobileye is not an automobile company, but rather a technology firm that is intensely focused on developing the next generation of artificial intelligence software.

The company was founded in the 1990s, after developers persuaded General Motors to buy an inexpensive camera that could detect vehicles in adjacent lanes.

Since then it has grown into a major supplier of automotive safety technology, all based on designing advanced algorithms that add “intelligence” to inexpensive cameras.

Mobileye has recently begun offering the third generation of its technology, which companies like Volvo have promoted for its ability to detect pedestrians and cyclists. Nissan also recently gave a hint of things to come with a demonstration of a car that could automatically swerve to avoid a pedestrian who walked out from behind a parked car. The system was based on Mobileye technology.

As soon as this summer, the first limited systems offering a feature known as “traffic jam assist” will begin arriving from more than five major automobile makers. Those cars will drive safely in stop-and-go traffic, but will require that drivers keep their hands on the steering wheel.

But more advanced systems will be introduced as early as 2016, according to Mobileye, and it was that advanced capability I experienced last month, during my foray in freeway traffic.

With two Mobileye engineers, Dr. Hayon and Eyal Bagon, we drove several miles east of Jerusalem, where Mobileye is located, and then pulled off at a nondescript turnout where another Mobileye employee waited in a shiny white Audi A7.

On the way out of town, the two men were apologetic. This was a work in progress, they told me.

I was already feeling a little let down. In California in 2010, I had been the first reporter to drive in the Google car, a Toyota Prius fitted with sensors that created a remarkably detailed map of the world around the car. Moreover, it was connected wirelessly to the Internet, giving it access to a vast cloud-based set of data that could be matched to what the local sensors were seeing.

It was a tour de force. The car merged seamlessly with traffic on Highway 101 and then turned off the freeway to automatically drive through downtown Mountain View, Calif., where Google has its headquarters. It was taken out of automatic pilot just twice — while passing a cyclist and then again to back into a parking space. The Google engineers did not want to chance a mishap with a reporter on board.

There was no such caution last month with the Mobileye engineers.

“Why don’t you drive?” Dr. Bagon suggested as he slid into the passenger seat behind a large display and keyboard. Dr. Hayon jumped into the back seat, and I had no choice but to get behind the wheel.

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This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 28, 2013

An earlier version of this article included an outdated figure for the number of miles driven so far by the experimental Google car. The cars have now surpassed 500,000 miles in California traffic, not 300,000.

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