Geoff Manaugh:

brisk afternoon in October, an oddly-­equipped Honda CR-V inched through London traffic. At the wheel was Matthew Shaw, a 32-year-old architectural designer; with him was a fellow designer, William Trossell, 30, and a small team of laser-­scanner operators. All were skilled in their technical fields, but their goal was art. What they hoped to scan was not just the shape of the city streets but the inner life of the autonomous cars that may soon come to dominate them.