In the coming decade, intelligent cars and trucks will hit the streets, rearranging established industries, enabling new business models, saving lives, easing air pollution, and reshaping cities. Long-suffering commuters will finally be able to live wherever they wish, and read (or nap) on their drive to work. The bad news is that hundreds of thousands of driving-related jobs are at risk, our legal system will need to be re-drawn, and passenger privacy could become a luxury of the past.

This book provides a jargon-free overview of the disruptive technologies that enable driverless cars, in particular, Deep Learning, an emerging form of artificial intelligence. Although the technology is nearly ready, car companies and policy makers may not be. The authors shed light on the opportunities and risks posed by self-driving vehicles, and make a compelling case for why their development should be our society's next concerted "Apollo moment." Driverless is a comprehensive and entertaining exploration of self-driving cars.

Table of Contents

1 The Robotic Chauffeur

2 A Driverless World

3 The Ultimate Mobility Device

4 A Mind of Its Own

5 Creating Artificial Perception

6 First There Were Electronic Highways

7 Build Smart Cars, not Smart Highways

8 Rise of the Robots

9 Anatomy of a Driverless Car

10 Deep Learning: The Final Piece of the Puzzle

11 Fueled by Data

12 The Ripple Effects

About the Authors

Hod Lipson is a leading roboticist, author, media figure, public speaker, and Professor of Engineering at Columbia University. He and Melba Kurman are coauthors of of Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing and Driverless: Autonomous Vehicles and the Road Ahead (MIT Press).

Melba Kurman is an author and technology analyst with years of software industry experience. She and Hod Lipson are coauthors of Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing and Driverless: Autonomous Vehicles and the Road Ahead (MIT Press).