Last week I had the chance to spend some time listening to, and talking with General Motors executives about the future of autonomous vehicles

"I’ve read a lot about how rapidly we are developing the technology that it was good to get first hand just how quickly cars that drive themselves are arriving. An interesting fact raised by an engineer, was just how the cars interrogate their surroundings and how thorough they have to be when developing the software. She highlighted that the cars cameras see the road signs around them, they have to compare what they see against a library of signs and be prepared to take action to conform to the signs requests…but consider this, in Australia alone there were around 60 different signs associated with School Zones…imagine how that multiplies around the globe! Another discussion turned to what’s called ‘Level 4 Autonomous Vehicles’. GM has a few of these cars that are essentially self-driving, being tested in San Francisco. A learning from these is that the passenger generally feels uncomfortable not knowing what the car is doing, so they place large screens in the rear headrests so the driver and passengers can see what the car sees and is interrogating. One of the hardest things for the cars to anticipate… Cyclists!! Being so small and agile they move more rapidly than cars or pedestrians, so when the cars detect cyclists they go into an uber precautious mode…gotta love cyclists!! I cant wait for more of this technology to hit our vehicles, many have parts of this software already built in...time will tell just how soon before our cars drive us…. "