This Audi Is Taking Itself on a California Road Trip

Look ma, no hands! Meet Jack, the Audi A7 who's driving all by himself from San Francisco to Las Vegas just in time for the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show. If you didn't think that the future is now, here's the proof. The driver-less car is set to travel 550 miles to prove that it is fully autonomous. Audi's A7 Sportback started cruising down California's highways Sunday, and the two-day trip is a culmination of over a year's worth of self-driving research in the real world.

Audi calls its technology "Piloted Driving," which includes a 3D camera that looks forward while four smaller cameras look at each corner of the car. Those are just a few of the many cameras and sensors placed throughout the vehicle to ensure safety. A speed limit camera reads and interprets signs along the highway to help the car maintain a legal speed. An infrared camera behind the grill detects people and animals crossing the road at night. The Audi A7 will be able to drive itself for most of the journey, but a human will need to intervene in urban areas and if the vehicle's speed exceeds 70 mph.

Last year, Audi impressed us with frickin' laser headlamps and the best keyboard input system we'd ever seen. We're excited for all the advancement it's making on the autonomous driving front. The self-piloted A7 is still in its prototype phase, and Audi is hardly the first automaker to take the technology seriously. Google released its own electric self-driving prototype with no brakes, gas pedal, or steering wheel in December 2014.