Posted on 02/03/2013 8:48:34 AM PST by EXCH54FE
A Lexus drives down the eight-lane highway outside Palo Alto, California, in heavy traffic. Except for the rotating cylinder perched on its roof like an oversized tin can and the word "Google" on its doors, it looks like any other car. In reality, though, it's a search engine on wheels.
The Lexus steers itself down the highway by itself. The man in the driver's seat -- Dmitri Dolgov, software engineer, never actually touches the wheel.
Dolgov explains what the car can do, which turns out to be quite a lot. It can steer, accelerate and brake automatically; it surveys its surroundings with cameras and uses radar to measure the distance to the car in front of it; and its laser scanner -- the cylinder on the roof -- monitors objects in all directions.
"See?" Dolgov asks, pointing as a car swerves in front of the Google vehicle from the right. There's no need for Dolgov to intervene. The robotic car has identified what is happening and gently brakes until there is once again a proper distance between the cars.
With its 12 vehicles, Google has the largest known test fleet of self-driving cars. All together, the Internet giant has covered over half a million kilometers (300,000 miles) in these robotic vehicles, most of it on California's public roads and highways. The cars have driven through Los Angeles, around Lake Tahoe and down the famous hairpin turns of San Francisco's Lombard Street. They have become so reliable, in fact, that Google is now taking SPIEGEL out for a demonstration.
Self-driving cars, long dismissed as a utopian pipe dream, are rapidly reaching the stage where they will be ready for the market. "We're not talking about 20 years here, but more like five," says Sebastian Thrun, initiator and director of Google's project.
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
“Self-driving cars, even if they offered perfect safety (ha) and economy, are a bad idea because they represent government control of individual’s transportation.”
You are wrong about how these cars work. They do not operate feedback loops with GPS. Their reception of GPS information is one way only. They do not send out their locations. There is no monitoring. You are monitored far more by the phone in your pocket than you would be by one of these cars.
Consider the freedom oriented alternative. As these vehicles get better and better (they have already surpassed human drivers for safety), you will no longer need a drivers license to travel with.
You are naive in the extreme if you think that will stay that way. They will be as private as the internet. Do you seriously think Google cars won't record everything you do? And, since Google is a total tool of the left, they won't share the data collected with Obama's myrmidons?
Drive home at night when a dusting of snow has obliterated the lane markers and there are no other cars around to follow, no tracks... It is amazing what the human mind can perceive and accomplish. Getting a computer to do this?
Well - Google technology was originally founded on Linux, so I imagine that they are staying far away from Windows.
Someone—privately e-mail me, please—and explain to me how on earth an insurance company can deal with this?
They cannot just insure a vehicle. There is no ‘driver’.
I don’t understand what would happen if one of these ‘driverless’ cars caused an accident and who would be liable for all the damages!!!
Thanks in advance.
I can envision localities fighting this technology to try and kill it. If we have cars run by computers, what will that do to the revenues from tickets and dui arrests?
Even with GPS off, a cell phone uses cell tower triangulation to locate its position. The police can use this info to track individuals w/o a warrant.
Your assessment is correct.
Without Buford T. Justice, a lot of podunk will have no income source for their podunk preservation activities.
Of course, off-roading won't work and there will be no things like the Shelby Cobra GT 500 (which I drove last weekend - it was AWESOME!).
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