Self-Driving Cars for Testing Are Supported by U.S.

On Thursday, the Transportation Department made its first formal policy statement on autonomous vehicles. In a nonbinding recommendation to the states, it said that driverless cars should not yet be allowed, except for testing. But it said that semiautonomous features, like cars that keep themselves centered in lanes and adjust their speed based on the location of the car ahead, could save lives.

The statement, from the department’s highway safety agency, comes as companies, led by Google, have made significant technological strides in making cars that drive themselves, but still face daunting legal, regulatory and cultural hurdles before the cars are widely available to drivers. It is the latest example of the tension between technological innovation and regulation, which move at very different speeds.

It is also a time of rapid change, and some anxiety, about autonomous systems in general. The transportation department is struggling, for instance, to determine how to regulate drone aircraft.

The statement detailed the benefits of self-driving and semiautonomous cars, which analysts said was a recognition by government officials that it had no choice but to keep up with the advancing technology in this area, which falls on a continuum from cruise control to full automation.

“It’s not that they’re trying to put the brakes on it,” said Richard Wallace, director of transportation systems analysis at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. “They’re trying to get out in front of it.”

Still, the highway safety agency was careful to address the tension between technology and regulation.

“Any potential regulatory action must appropriately balance the need to ensure motor vehicle safety with the flexibility to innovate,” it said.

Even though technology companies like Google generally fear that innovation far outpaces regulation and risks being stifled by it, it has a different approach with cars than with software or cellphones because cars have been heavily regulated for decades, said Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington who co-founded the Legal Aspects of Autonomous Driving center at Stanford.

“We want to have some experimentation in the states to see what works, but it’s nice to have federal experts helping out, as long as they don’t take it too far,” he said.

Autonomous cars could increase safety because they are not subject to human error like disobeying traffic laws and falling asleep at the wheel, according to analysts, car companies and the transportation department. They could also offer mobility to people who cannot drive, like the disabled or the aging.

Driverless cars could “change our lives, give us more green space, mobility, fewer hours wasted,” Larry Page, Google’s chief executive, said this month. “The average American spends 50 minutes commuting. Imagine if you got that back.”

Still, many Americans are dubious about automated driving, according to a poll by the Auto Alliance, a Washington trade group that represents 12 of the largest carmakers selling vehicles in the United States. For instance, 81 percent said they were concerned that computer hackers could take control of an automated vehicle.

Even if automated cars were safer, people would worry about the lack of human judgment, Mr. Calo said.

“The first time that a driverless vehicle swerves to avoid a shopping cart and hits a stroller, someone’s going to write, ‘robot car kills baby to save groceries,’ ” he said. “It’s those kinds of reasons you want to make sure this stuff is fully tested.”

Yet most people will have the option of buying a car that is part robot in some sense next time they visit a dealership. Vehicles ranging from German luxury cars to mass-market American sedans are now equipped with automated safety systems, which rely on computer processors, software and sensors.

Future models from Mercedes-Benz have radar systems that brake a car in the event of an impending collision, stay in its proper lane around curves and sense when a driver is fatigued. Ford Motor Company’s midsize Fusion sedan has a lane-assist system that alerts drivers when they stray on the roadway. Many cars come with adaptive cruise control that automatically cuts the speed when the distance between vehicles gets too close.

Claire Cain Miller reported from San Francisco and Matthew L. Wald from Washington. John M. Broder contributed reporting from Washington and Bill Vlasic from Detroit.

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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