谷歌自动驾驶汽车的冒险旅程
After 500,000 miles of road tests, Google's self-driving car team gave New Yorker writer Bilger deep access for a profile this week.
经过50万英里的道路测试之后，谷歌(Google)的自动驾驶汽车团队本周不同寻常地让纽约作家比尔格( Bilger)深度了解了这款汽车的情况。
It's still unclear whether the larger idea of cars will work at all - the most seems to be that they will come to market in five to 10 years.
现在还不清楚自动汽车这一宏大概念能否行得通――最乐观的估计似乎是，它们将在5到10年内进入市场。
But self-driving cars are what put Google on the map as a company that tries to make science fiction into reality, so the tale of how they came to be is .
但自动驾驶汽车让谷歌成为出了名的试图将科幻变成现实的公司，因此关于其概念如何形成的故事也引人注目。
The hero of Bilger's story is 33-year-old Anthony , who joined Google after a self-driving for the DARPA Grand (though it sounds like that didn't work all that well). was toiling away on Google Street View with the more-famous / Thrun before the two of them got the go-ahead from Google co- Larry Page and Sergey Brin to start working on self-driving cars.
比尔格报道的主角是33岁的工程师莱万多斯基(Anthony )谷歌自动驾驶技术，他加入谷歌之前为美国无人驾驶汽车挑战赛(DARPA Grand )设计了一款自动驾驶摩托车（不过听上去这款车运行起来不怎么样）。莱万多斯基在谷歌与更有名的发明家兼教授特龙( Thrun)一起埋头开发谷歌街景(Google Street View)，后来他们二人得到谷歌联合创始人佩里(Larry Page)和布林(Sergey Brin)的许可，开始致力于自动驾驶汽车专案。
What made the ? A TV show 's wacky idea for a stunt, believe it or not.
对无人驾驶汽车这个概念产生重大影响的是什么？信不信由你，这个项目始于一个电视节目制作人想出来的雷人噱头。
From Bilger's piece:
比尔格的报道中说：
'In of 2008, got a call from a of ' This!,' a series on the Channel. Would he be in a self-driving pizza car? Within five weeks, he and a team of fellow and other had a Prius for the purpose. They patched a system and the Highway Patrol to let the car cross the Bay Bridge-from San to Island. It would be the first time an car had driven legally on streets.'
2008年2月，莱万多斯基接到探索频道( Channel)系列节目“ This!”一位制作人的电话，问他有没有兴趣打造一款自动驾驶的披萨配送车？在五个星期内，他和一个由伯克利校友以及其他工程师组成的团队就改造了一辆普瑞斯(Prius)。他们拼凑出一个导航系统，并说服加州高速公路巡警( Highway Patrol)让这辆车驶过海湾大桥――从旧金山行驶到金银岛。这是无人驾驶汽车首次合法地在美国街道上行驶。
The bridge earned Page and Brin's go-ahead within a few months, to Thrun.
特龙说，这次成功的“过桥行使”让他们获得了佩奇和布林的首肯，在接下来几个月的时间里继续从事这项研究。
Then the two Google co-, 'like boys a hunt,' gave the self-driving car team a set of 10 100-mile . 'The roads wound through every part of the Bay Area- from the leafy lanes of Menlo Park to the of Lombard Street. If the driver took the wheel or tapped the brakes even once, the trip was .' The team all 10 in a year and a half.
接下来谷歌自动驾驶技术，谷歌的两位共同创始人像计划着进行“寻物游戏”的孩子一样，给自动驾驶汽车团队设定了10条100英里的路线。这些路线经过了湾区的每一个部分，从门洛帕克(Menlo Park)的林荫道到隆巴德街(Lombard Street)之字爬坡路线。如果驾驶者动了方向盘或是踩了刹车，这次行程就算没通过。在一年半的时间里，团队完成全部10条路线。
There's a lot more to the story, but the real is, what's next for the self-driving car? There are on fronts, now that the -hunt phase is over. 1) Jumping over legal hurdles. 2) out how to bring the cars to market, given are to the word 'self driving' (though they're OK with smaller and subtler tweaks, where machine smarts help drivers out). And 3) Making next leaps forward in sensors and machine . Even if cars are safer, any mistake will tarnish the entire .
关于这个故事，还有很多东西可讲，但真正的问题在于，自动驾驶汽车的下一步往哪里走？“寻物游戏”这一阶段走过之后，这个项目在很多方面都面临着挑战。1）越过法律上的障碍；2）在市场已经对“自动驾驶”一词过敏的情况下，找出把汽车推向市场的方法（不过把这这个词稍微改动一下，表明机器智能能为驾驶者提供帮助，市场就会接受）；3）在传感器和机器学习方面再一次实现技术飞跃。即便有统计数据表明自动驾驶汽车更安全，但如果出现任何错误还是会让全部努力受到损害。
As Bilger reports, 'The car has trouble in the rain, for , when its lasers bounce off shiny . (The first drops call forth a small icon of a cloud and a voice warning that auto-drive will soon .) It can't tell wet from dry or fresh asphalt from firm. It can't hear a traffic cop's whistle or follow hand signals.'
比尔格在报道里写道，比如，这种车在下雨的时候会遇到麻烦114信息网MIP移动站，因为这时候激光会在光滑的表面反射。（最初的几滴雨水会让屏幕上出现一个云朵状的小图标，然后就有声音提醒自动驾驶功能即将关闭。）这种车无法区分湿混凝土和干混凝土，刚铺好的沥青和已经坚实的沥青。它听不见交警的哨音，也无法遵从交通手势的指引。
At the same time, the car is often smarter than a human. For , it can prepare to brake based on traffic data about a coming ahead, or slow to a crawl at on a wooded road when it senses a deer walking on the .
与此同时，汽车通常比人更聪明。比如谷歌自动驾驶汽车的冒险旅程，汽车可以通过交通数据发现前方需要减速，因此做好制动减速的准备，或是在夜间林地行车发现路肩上有一头行走的鹿的时候减速慢行。
And are coming, says Bilger: 'At the tech meeting I , showed the team a video of Google's newest laser, slated to be within the year. It had more than twice the range of models - eleven hundred feet instead of two hundred and sixty - and thirty times the . At three hundred feet, it could spot a metal plate less than two inches thick. The laser would be about the size of a coffee mug, he told me, and cost around ten dollars-seventy less than the current model.'
比尔格说，会不断地有所改进。他说，在我参加的这次科技会议上，莱万多斯基向团队展示了一个谷歌最新激光装置的视频，按计划该激光装置将在今年内装备到汽车上；新装置的探测范围是以前型号的两倍――从260英尺增加到1,100英尺，分辨率是以前型号的30倍。在300英尺远的地方，该装置可以发现厚度小于两英寸的金属牌；他告诉我，这一激光装置的尺寸只有一只咖啡杯大小，价格为1万美元，比当前的型号要低大约7万美元。
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