I got to race around in the back seat of one of the Google robocars, and it was thrilling.
It felt like a racetrack demo lap, where the instructors show off what they can do, with wheels squealing at the edge of performance… a newfound performance, in this case, eked out of an intelligence-enhanced Prius with no human driver. (here’s the video I took)
Imagine being driven entirely by the car for your work commute… in traffic, through tollbooths, and across bridges to the front door. Some Google engineers are already doing this every day.
No need to look for a parking space; just let the car find one for you as you enter the building.
Two computers tucked into the trunk are doing all the steering, braking and acceleration by issuing commands to the drive-by-wire bus already designed into modern hybrid and electric cars.
The spinning LIDAR on the room maps the environment in 3D including pedestrians and, in this case, traffic cones. A camera to the side of the rear view mirror tracks the road. Three radars in the front bumper and one in back also detect proximal objects. GPS, inertial sensors and wheel-speed monitors give feedback to the computer on the car’s performance.
There are times when I want to drive, and times when being a driving machine feels more like the drudgery that is better left to the machines. Or when you are tired, or want a designated driver for an evening out. Commute time is a staggering collective time waster, and Ford estimates it will escalate to global gridlock in the near future. Google’s Thrun estimates that autonomous vehicles could pack more closely together and achieve 2-3x throughput improvements from existing roadways, with fuel and pollution savings from the efficiency gains. And in urban environments, the largest amount of drive time is spent looking for a parking space.
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atbennett 11 months ago | reply
I used this on ITworld here: Driverless cars move closer in California
. Thank you!
jurvetson 8 months ago | reply
and closer still... now that the bill has passed. A new NPR radio program is airing today around the California law on robo cars:
My dream is that if my kids can make it through college without a car, then by that time in the future, there will be no reason to learn how to drive. Imagine skipping the teen driving years altogether (year one is a death trap for all, and ADD teens are worse than drunk drivers in some studies).
vennettaj ( a bit away ) 8 months ago | reply
i know you are trying very hard, but just send them to new york :)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_most_house...
jurvetson 5 weeks ago | reply
They are always forward looking to uprisings and such... In the book Robopocalyse, the robot uprising begins when all the cars disable the door locks and then run into each other head on, passengers banging on the windows helpless.