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The first robot car race was a historic moment — and a complete failure
This is the story of a self-driving car crash that turned into a revolution.
In his book Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car, author Alex Davies describes the contestants as “Frankencars.” “Every vehicle looked like it had crashed into a RadioShack and came out the other side wrapped in a labyrinth of cables, computers, cameras, radars, laser scanners, antennas, and whatever else its creators hoped would help it reach the finish line,” he writes. The team that entered the self-driving motorcycle, called Ghostrider, included Anthony Levandowski, who later found himself briefly imprisoned after he was convicted of stealing Google’s trade secrets and bringing them to Uber. There have been great strides made in autonomy — fully driverless cars are in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin right now — but skepticism runs high, and many people remain unconvinced that the technology is worth pursuing.
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