Will the #selfdrivingcar make drivers obsolete?

Chris Urmson, director of Google's "Self-Driving Car Project" says on the Google blog that the tech giant plans to roll out self-driving electric cars in a few years. To start with they will have a steering wheel, brake and accelerator. But the plan is to rid cars of the old technology.

Google has been testing self-driving cars at its headquarters in Mountain View, California, for a while. But there's always a driver in the car, who can - and has to - intervene, when the robot driving the car fails to do what it should. The human driver is responsible by law for everything the car does.

Pile-ups like these can happen when we drive too fast, struggle with poor visibility or drive too close to other cars. Google hopes intelligent robot cars will not make such mistakes. They're programmed to drive very safely and if connected could alert other cars.

Robot cars use many different sensors to view and analyze their surroundings. The Google car uses this laser sensor. It keeps turning and scans the streets with a laser beam that provides a 3D picture.

And this is what it looks like. Germany's Bundeswehr University is developing its own self-driving vehicle - seen here in rough terrain. Its laser creates a three-dimensional map, which it sends to a computer, allowing you to track the car's progress.

Robots have other ways to find their bearings on the road: optical eyes, such as this regular USB-camera, or little radar sensors. Positioning via satellite is also very important for self-driving cars. GPS data has long helped drivers find their way.

Researchers at Daimler are working with optical cameras. For the invention of "seeing cars," the researchers were nominated for the German Future Award in 2011. This camera is set up directly behind the windshield of a regular car. It tracks everything that happens on the road.

The pictures are converted and sent to an onboard computer, which recognizes dangers, depending on the car's speed. Here, a pedestrian is walking into the car's path from the right and is marked orange. In the background, a car driving away is marked green, meaning it presents no danger. This way, the car can react independent of the driver.

The technology is ready. But sending robots into traffic poses heavy ethical questions for politicians and lawyers. Who is responsible if a robot-car causes an accident: the manufacturer, software programmer, owner or the person "behind the wheel"?

Self-driving cars could be very useful in war scenarios to transport material without putting a driver's life in danger, or after nuclear accidents to avoid sending a person into contaminated areas. Developers - not only Google - are building a range of autonomous vehicles, including this one at the Polish military academy.

The European robot competition ELROB 2014 takes place in Warsaw, Poland from June 23-27. All the self-driving cars on show will have a person in the front seat, just in case something goes wrong. But the goal is that when smart cars of the future drive over explosive mines, only the technology will be lost - not human life.