Driverless

Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead

By: Hod Lipson, Melba Kurman

Narrated by: George Newbern

In the year 2014, Google fired a shot heard all the way to Detroit.

Google's newest driverless car had no steering wheel and no brakes. The message was clear: cars of the future will be born fully autonomous, with no human driver needed. In the coming decade, self-driving cars will hit the streets, rearranging established industries and reshaping cities, giving us new choices in where we live and how we work and play.

In this book, Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman offer listeners insight into the risks and benefits of driverless cars, and a lucid and engaging explanation of the enabling technology. Recent advances in software and robotics are toppling long-standing technological barriers that for decades have confined self-driving cars to the realm of fantasy. A new kind of artificial intelligence software called deep learning gives cars rapid and accurate visual perception. Human drivers can relax and take their eyes off the road.

When human drivers let intelligent software take the wheel, driverless cars will offer billions of people all over the world a safer, cleaner, and more convenient mode of transportation. Although the technology is nearly ready, car companies and policy makers may not be. The authors make a compelling case for why government, industry, and consumers need to work together to make the development of driverless cars our society's next "Apollo moment".

©2016 Hod Lipson & Melba Kurman (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Phenomenal Book

A great foundation for someone wanting to learn the pros, cons and elements of autonomous vehicles

Read this!

If you want to learn about this subject, not just what is but what’s coming and could be coming, and how it will impact everything from leisure to insurance liability, this is your book. Simply superb, and well crafted from start to finish. Highly recommended.

Excellent and Inspiring

A very factual and balanced presentation of the possible future with Driverless Pods - the word 'pod' is used to differentiate these future vehicles from cars with steering wheels and dashboards, etc.

Written by Pod Lipson and Melba Kurman, it is very clear, thorough and cogent; and uses the word 'Pod' many many times.

Inspiring and thoughtful. It gives one pods for thought.

WOW!

If you are at all interested in the future, maybe where to put a little bit of your money now, or just curious as to how the future could develop, this book is for you!
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I’m looking forward to listening to it again!
The reader has a way of keeping the book alive!
Well done!

driverless car disruption

enjoyed this review on how driverless cars will effect the future. I also enjoyed the section on neural networks and their advances in the last decade or so.