The object sits on the 2)shoulder of the 3)freeway, slowly 4)shimmering into view. Is it 5)roadkill? A weird kind of 6)sagebrush? No, wait, it’s…a 7)puffy chunk of foam 8)insulation!“The laser almost certainly got returns off of it,”says Chris Urmson, a 9)roboticist, sitting behind the wheel of the 10)Prius he is not driving. A note is made as we drive past, to help our computerized car understand the curious 11)flotsam it has just seen. It’s a Monday, midday, and we are heading north on California Highway 85 in a Google autonomous vehicle. “This car can do 75 mph,” Urmson says. “It can track pedestrians and cyclists. It understands traffic lights. It can merge at highway speeds.” In short, after almost a hundred years in which driving has remained essentially unchanged, it has been completely transformed in just the past half decade.
　　As we are in the Google car, I watch the action unfold on the computer monitor mounted on the passenger side of the 12)dashboard. It shows how the car is interpreting the world: lanes, signs, cars, speeds, distances. It is absolutely fascinating to watch as the car not only 13)plots and calculates the 14)myriad movements of neighboring vehicles in the moment, but also predicts where they will be in the future. “We’re analyzing and predicting the world 20 times a second,” says Anthony Levandowski, business lead on Google’s self-driving-car project.
　　A car comes speeding along the adjacent 15)onramp. Do we accelerate or slow? It’s a moment that puzzles many human drivers. Our vehicle chooses to 16)decelerate, but it can rethink that decision as more data comes in—if, for instance, the merging car brakes suddenly. The computer 17)flags a car one lane over, maybe 30 feet in front of us, and slows 18)imperceptibly. “We’re being held back by this guy because we don’t want to be in his blind spot,”Levandowski says. A bus suddenly 19)looms next to us. “Even if you can drive in the center of the lane, down to the centimeter, that doesn’t mean it’s the safest route,” he says. And so the car 20)drifts just a bit to the left to 21)distance itself from the bus. “If you look at it, we’re not actually driving center, though we’re still not driving as bad as he is,” he says, pointing to a gray 22)SUV ahead that’s 23)straddling two lanes.
　　Levandowski has a point. I was briefly nervous when Urmson first took his hands off the wheel and a 24)synth woman’s voice announced 25)coolly,“Autodrive.” But after a few minutes, the idea of a computer-driven car seemed much less terrifying than the 26)panorama of BlackBerry-27)fumbling, rule-28)flouting, and other 29)vagaries of the humans around us. The Prius begins to seem like the 30)Platonic ideal of a driver, against which all others 31)fall short. It can think faster than any 32)mortal driver. It can 33)attend to more information, react more quickly to emergencies, and keep track of more complicated routes. It never panics. It never gets angry. It never even blinks. In short, it is better than human in just about every way. I find myself imagining how much more smoothly the system would function if every car were like this one.
　　While Google wants to create, in essence, computers that drive, the auto industry has been trying to make its vehicles drive more like computers. 34)Bolstered by increasingly powerful and affordable sensors, sophisticated 35)algorithms, and 36)Moore’s law, the world’s carmakers have been slowly redefining what it means to be a driver, encouraging us to 37)offload everything from 38)shifting gears to parallel parking. The automated car isn’t just around the corner—it’s here.
　　No computer voice greets me when I press the ignition button of the new S-Class Mercedes parked in the front lot of 39)Mercedes-Benz Research & Development in Palo Alto. My driving is being constantly monitored by the car’s Attention Assistance function, which tracks more than 70 elements—from minor steering wheel movements to my use of turn signals—for signs of operator 40)fatigue. After 20 minutes, the 41)baseline is set and the car will flag subsequent deviations. If, while 42)parsing the data, it senses that I’ve grown weary, a coffee cup icon pops up in the instrument cluster(it’s up to me to 43)pull over for the coffee).
　　Attention assistance is just the beginning. R&D head Johann Jungwirth, who’s sitting next to me, 44)ticks off with a salesman’s efficiency everything the car does for me: If it rains, the 45)wipers activate. If I enter a tunnel, the headlights adjust their illumination. When a car in the neighboring lane creeps into my blind spot, a red triangle illuminates in my side mirror; if I try to change lanes, the icon flashes and beeps. If I drift out of my lane, the steering wheel 46)rumbles gently. It is, in short, a 47)stealthily 48)semiautonomous computer on wheels. “There are tens of thousands of processes running in parallel,” Jungwirth says. A car like this 49)boasts upwards of 60 electronic control units, handling everything from automatic braking to automatic 50)trunk opening.
　　The truth is we have gradually been distancing our level of active engagement with the process of operating a car. We automated the shifting of gears. We went from 51)manual steering to power steering and then finally to “drive-by-wire,” in which the mechanical connection between the steering wheel and the tires was replaced by a series of electrical 52)impulses. We gave up paper maps for digital navigation systems. The hazards of parallel parking have been 53)ironed out by 54)ultrasonic sensors. This year, electronic stability control is standard on vehicles sold in the US for the same reason 55)antilock brakes are standard in Europe: Its algorithms can perform better than humans in emergency 56)maneuvering.
　　Nobody knows how self-driving cars might change the 57)fabric of our lives. “The moment you start putting intelligence in a car, you start changing the essence of what a car is,” 58)futurist Saffo says.
　　那个物体就位于高速路路肩上，闪着微光，渐渐进入视野。是被撞死的动物的尸体吗？还是某种古怪的蒿属植物？不，等等，原来是……一块胀鼓鼓的泡沫绝缘材料！“激光肯定检测到了那东西，”机器人专家克里斯·乌尔姆森说，他坐在一辆普锐斯混合动力车的驾驶座上，但他并没有在驾驶。当我们的车开过时，路边的异物已经被记录下来，帮助电脑监控的汽车识别它刚刚所见到的东西。现在是星期一中午，我们正乘坐谷歌公司的一辆无人驾驶全自动汽车行驶在加州85号高速路上。“这辆车时速可达75英里，”乌尔姆森说，“它可以追踪行人、骑自行车者；能读懂交通信号灯，也能高速汇入车流。”简而言之，在过去五年里，曾经近一个世纪不变的汽车驾驶方式被彻底改变了。
　　坐在谷歌无人驾驶汽车里，我可以通过靠副驾驶位置、安装在仪表板上的电脑监视器了解车子的一切运作。它显示着汽车对周围世界的感知：车道、信号、汽车、车速、距离。看着电脑一边测定并计算此时周围汽车的位置和运动，一边预测它们下一刻的方位，实在是令人着迷。“我们每秒钟对周围世界进行2 0次分析和预测，”谷歌公司无人驾驶汽车项目负责人安东尼·列文托斯基说。
　　高速公路邻近的入口通道上飙出一辆汽车。我们该加速还是减速？这个问题让很多人类驾驶员苦恼。我们的汽车决定减速，但随着更多数据的汇入——比如那辆汽车突然刹车——它可能重新思考这个决定。电脑注意到一辆汽车正从旁边车道换线到我们前方约30英尺处，于是电脑控制我们的车子悄悄减速。“碍于这个家伙，我们得减速，因为我们不想进入他的盲区，”列文托斯基说。一辆公共汽车突然从旁边靠了上来。“即使你能确保在道路中央行驶，精确到厘米，那也并不一定就是最安全的路线，”他说。于是，我们的汽车向左靠了靠，拉开和公共汽车的距离。“如果你仔细看看，我们实际上并没有行驶在车道中央，但是我们远比那个家伙开得好，”他指着前面一辆踩着两条车道的分隔线行驶的灰色越野旅行车说道。
　　列文托斯基的话不无道理。当乌尔姆森的手移开方向盘，一个电子合成的女声冷静地宣布“自动驾驶”时，我不禁感到一阵紧张。但几分钟过后，与我们周围的人类驾驶者那种种古怪行径——有人一边开车一边在摸索着拨打黑莓手机，有人根本无视交通规则——相比，由电脑掌控驾驶汽车的主意似乎变得不那么可怕。我们乘坐的这辆普锐斯越来越像一位终极理想驾驶者，其他人都相形见绌。它的反应速度远超任何人类驾驶员。它可以同时处理更多信息，面对紧急情况，反应更迅速，而且熟悉更多复杂路线。它从不惊慌失措，从不发脾气，甚至连眼睛都不眨一下。简而言之，无论在哪个方面它都更优于人类。我开始想象，如果每一辆车都像这辆这样，公路交通将会变得多么通畅。
　　在谷歌公司意图创造会驾驶的计算机的同时，汽车产业界则试图让它们的汽车像电脑一样驾驶。在日益强大的感应器、复杂的运算系统以及摩尔定律的支持下，各地汽车制造商们正逐渐改变驾驶的方式，鼓励我们将一切——从换挡到平行泊车——交给自动系统。自动汽车并非即将到来，而是已经出现了。
　　在美国加州西部帕洛阿尔托梅赛德斯—奔驰研发中心门口的停车场，我坐上一辆新款S级梅赛德斯汽车，按下点火按钮，没有听到电脑合成的声音向我打招呼。我的驾驶过程被这台车装有的注意力辅助系统监控着，它可以跟踪70多个因素——从细微的方向盘运动到转向信号的使用——任何显示疲劳驾驶的征兆。20分钟后，基准线被设定，汽车会标记随后的偏离情况。分析数据时，如果它感应到我变得疲惫，一个咖啡杯标志会出现在仪表盘上（由我自行决定是否停下来喝杯咖啡提提神）。
　　注意力辅助系统还只是一个开始。研发部负责人约翰·荣格沃斯坐在我旁边，像个推销员那样热情洋溢地列举该车的功能：如果下雨，雨刷会自动启动。如果进入隧道，头灯会自动调整亮度。当旁边车道的汽车进入我的盲区，一个红色三角形会出现在侧镜上；如果我试图变换车道，这个三角标志会闪烁并发出警告声。如果我偏离了自己的车道，方向盘会发出轻微的声响。简而言之，这是一台安装在轮子上悄悄运行着的半自动电脑。“成千上万个程序在同时运行，”荣格沃斯说。这样一台车拥有60多个电子控制系统，处理从自动刹车到自动打开车尾箱等一切操作。
　　事实上，我们正在逐渐放松对汽车的掌控程度。手动挡变成自动挡。手动转向变成电动转向，再变成“电子控线”，方向盘和轮胎之间的机械联系被一系列电子脉冲取代。我们放弃了纸制地图，换成了数字导航系统。超声波传感器让水平泊车变得方便安全。今年，提高稳定性的电子控制系统成了美国在售车辆的标准配置，其原因和欧洲汽车必须安装防锁刹车系统一样：在紧急情况下，这种自动系统的表现比人类更优秀。
　　没有人知道，无人驾驶汽车将如何改变我们的生活方式。未来派艺术家萨福说：“在你开始将智能注入汽车时，你也在开始改变汽车的本质。”