Google has travelled 140,000 miles in self-driving cars
Posted: Mon Oct 11, 2010 2:03 pm
Google has travelled 140,000 miles in self-driving cars
By Mark Brown.
“We have developed technology for cars that can drive themselves”, Google’s Sebastian Thrun reveals, in a rather unassuming, matter of fact way"
In pursuit of accomplishing the online behemoth’s lofty mantra, to “help solve really big problems using technology”, the company has been designing, building and testing a marriage of software and hardware that could one day take control of your car in the name of upping safety and cutting pollution.
The company has announced that its automated vehicles have navigated themselves around Hollywood and San Francisco, between Google’s campuses and across the Pacific Coast Highway, logging over 140,000 miles in self-driven cars. Don’t worry, the cars have always been manned by trained operators, who can take over with ease, and the police had been informed.
The cars sport video cameras, radar sensors, laser range finders to “see” other traffic. Plus, the vehicles require detailed maps that were already collected by traditional, data-collecting cars and mined for enormous amounts of information by the search giant’s data centres.
Google says its borrowed the talents of the best engineers from the DARPA Urban Challenges, a government held contest to make autonomous vehicles. The team members' shared achievements include the world’s first autonomous motorcycle and a Toyota Prius that can deliver pizza without a driver.
Alongside using the technology to ramp up transportation efficiency, free up people’s time and reduce carbon emissions, the team’s major goal has always been safety. “According to the World Health Organization, more than 1.2 million lives are lost every year in road traffic accidents,” says Thrun. “We believe our technology has the potential to cut that number, perhaps by as much as half.”
Since the technology was revealed over the weekend, people have dug up age old photos they took of strange cars, now knowing exactly what they were snapping. Ben Tseitlin revealed that he saw the car in 2009, but thought it was a wind-powered Prius. Tech Pundit Robert Scoble saw the vehicle earlier this year, but thought it was a new model of the Google Street View car.
The project is still very much in an experimental and testing phase, but Google remains confident that it will have real implications soon. “It provides a glimpse of what transportation might look like in the future, thanks to advanced computer science.”
Google is already mapping the world with its Google Street View Cars, Snowmobiles and Tricycles. If you are driving on Highway 1 between San Francisco and Los Angeles, you might actually spot this Google Toyota Prius car with a strange cylinder on the roof – and a driver who is sitting back and enjoying the view, while not actually driving. Automated cars are finally here for real, and Google is making it a reality.
Photo Credit:go
By Mark Brown.
“We have developed technology for cars that can drive themselves”, Google’s Sebastian Thrun reveals, in a rather unassuming, matter of fact way"
In pursuit of accomplishing the online behemoth’s lofty mantra, to “help solve really big problems using technology”, the company has been designing, building and testing a marriage of software and hardware that could one day take control of your car in the name of upping safety and cutting pollution.
The company has announced that its automated vehicles have navigated themselves around Hollywood and San Francisco, between Google’s campuses and across the Pacific Coast Highway, logging over 140,000 miles in self-driven cars. Don’t worry, the cars have always been manned by trained operators, who can take over with ease, and the police had been informed.
The cars sport video cameras, radar sensors, laser range finders to “see” other traffic. Plus, the vehicles require detailed maps that were already collected by traditional, data-collecting cars and mined for enormous amounts of information by the search giant’s data centres.
Google says its borrowed the talents of the best engineers from the DARPA Urban Challenges, a government held contest to make autonomous vehicles. The team members' shared achievements include the world’s first autonomous motorcycle and a Toyota Prius that can deliver pizza without a driver.
Alongside using the technology to ramp up transportation efficiency, free up people’s time and reduce carbon emissions, the team’s major goal has always been safety. “According to the World Health Organization, more than 1.2 million lives are lost every year in road traffic accidents,” says Thrun. “We believe our technology has the potential to cut that number, perhaps by as much as half.”
Since the technology was revealed over the weekend, people have dug up age old photos they took of strange cars, now knowing exactly what they were snapping. Ben Tseitlin revealed that he saw the car in 2009, but thought it was a wind-powered Prius. Tech Pundit Robert Scoble saw the vehicle earlier this year, but thought it was a new model of the Google Street View car.
The project is still very much in an experimental and testing phase, but Google remains confident that it will have real implications soon. “It provides a glimpse of what transportation might look like in the future, thanks to advanced computer science.”
Google is already mapping the world with its Google Street View Cars, Snowmobiles and Tricycles. If you are driving on Highway 1 between San Francisco and Los Angeles, you might actually spot this Google Toyota Prius car with a strange cylinder on the roof – and a driver who is sitting back and enjoying the view, while not actually driving. Automated cars are finally here for real, and Google is making it a reality.
Photo Credit:go