Sputnik... An autonomous car fitted with radar, cameras and laser sensors drove itself 99% of the time during a recent 3,400-mile trip from San Francisco to New York – never once exceeding the speed limit on the 15-state journey. The person sitting in the driver seat of the Audi Q5 – outfitted by auto supplier Delphi Corp. – intervened once when traffic was weaving around in a construction zone, and again when the car did not want to move into a busy left lane to avoid police stopped on the right shoulder.
While navigating bridges, traffic circles and open highways, the car collected nearly three terabytes of data – roughly equivalent to 30 percent of all of the printed material in the Library of Congress – which engineers can use to further enhance autonomous driving systems.