If you were on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on the morning of September 7, 2008, you may have noticed an unusual sight driving along: a silver Toyota Prius with plenty of graphics and robotic equipment, complete with a police escort and camera crew, but with no driver inside the car. CNET's Cutting Edge reports that the "Pribot's" maiden run was mostly successful, save for a slight scrape on the left side on the exit ramp at the end.

Anthony Levandowski, 28, a computer engineer who lives in San Francisco and works in Silicon Valley, developed the Pribot. First, Levandowski drove around SF and scanned the streets using a pulsed laser to build a precise 3D map of the landscape. Then the Pribot used a combination of GPS, inertial guidance, and a pair of infrared lasers that scanned its surroundings and compared its location with the previously built 3D map. (That description makes it sound so simple, like it was a two-hour afternoon project.)

"The technology for being able to improve your convenience and safety while on the freeway is just around the corner," Levandowski said in the report. "I want to be the one to provide that."