Post by dustdevil28 on Oct 11, 2010 16:29:55 GMT -8
How cool is this. I've been wondering how long it would take us to reach the day of a sort of auto pilot for the roads and I do believe that there will be a day of roads that are somewhat similar to what we saw in the movie "minority report."
Good stuff.
....................
Google took a step into the future this weekend by announcing it was developing a self-driving car that can navigate the roads without a driver behind the wheel.
A test car has thus far driven 140,000 miles around the San Francisco Bay Area – driving down Lombard St., across the Golden Gate Bridge, and all the way around Lake Tahoe, among other destinations, the company said.
For now, Google has one of its employees in the car at all times ready to take over if anything goes wrong, but it hopes to eventually get to a point where the cars can drive themselves remotely. Whether or not they will talk to you - a la K.I.T. from "Knight Rider" - remains to be seen.
View Slideshow See all (4) slides
MoreGoogle is not the first company to explore driverless vehicles, however. Efforts to produce a self-driving car date back almost 30 years, and one of the more notable projects was actually instrumental in helping Google's driverless vehicles come to life; the DARPA Urban Challenge.
DARPA Urban Challenge
The Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) hosted an Urban Challenge in 2007, which called on teams to develop a self-driving car that could maneuver itself through traffic and handle tasks like merging, passing, parking, and negotiating intersections.
DARPA held similar challenges in 2003 and 2004 for autonomous vehicles that could handle themselves on the battlefield, but graduated to urban settings in 2007.
Thirty-five teams competed over an eight-day period, with six successfully crossing the finish line. A team from Carnegie Mellon known as Tartan Racing took home the $2 million first prize. A team from Stanford University came in second and won $1 million, while a Virginia team got $500,000 for third place.
For its project, Google worked with Chris Urmson, who was the Carnegie Mellon team's technical lead, Mike Montemerlo, software lead for the Stanford team, and Anthony Levandowski, who also worked on the DARPA Urban Challenge (and developed a Prius that could deliver pizza without a person inside the car).
"Our automated cars use video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to 'see' other traffic, as well as detailed maps (which we collect using manually driven vehicles) to navigate the road ahead," Google wrote in a blog post. "This is all made possible by Google's data centers, which can process the enormous amounts of information gathered by our cars when mapping their terrain."
www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2370598,00.asp
Good stuff.
....................
Google took a step into the future this weekend by announcing it was developing a self-driving car that can navigate the roads without a driver behind the wheel.
A test car has thus far driven 140,000 miles around the San Francisco Bay Area – driving down Lombard St., across the Golden Gate Bridge, and all the way around Lake Tahoe, among other destinations, the company said.
For now, Google has one of its employees in the car at all times ready to take over if anything goes wrong, but it hopes to eventually get to a point where the cars can drive themselves remotely. Whether or not they will talk to you - a la K.I.T. from "Knight Rider" - remains to be seen.
View Slideshow See all (4) slides
MoreGoogle is not the first company to explore driverless vehicles, however. Efforts to produce a self-driving car date back almost 30 years, and one of the more notable projects was actually instrumental in helping Google's driverless vehicles come to life; the DARPA Urban Challenge.
DARPA Urban Challenge
The Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) hosted an Urban Challenge in 2007, which called on teams to develop a self-driving car that could maneuver itself through traffic and handle tasks like merging, passing, parking, and negotiating intersections.
DARPA held similar challenges in 2003 and 2004 for autonomous vehicles that could handle themselves on the battlefield, but graduated to urban settings in 2007.
Thirty-five teams competed over an eight-day period, with six successfully crossing the finish line. A team from Carnegie Mellon known as Tartan Racing took home the $2 million first prize. A team from Stanford University came in second and won $1 million, while a Virginia team got $500,000 for third place.
For its project, Google worked with Chris Urmson, who was the Carnegie Mellon team's technical lead, Mike Montemerlo, software lead for the Stanford team, and Anthony Levandowski, who also worked on the DARPA Urban Challenge (and developed a Prius that could deliver pizza without a person inside the car).
"Our automated cars use video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to 'see' other traffic, as well as detailed maps (which we collect using manually driven vehicles) to navigate the road ahead," Google wrote in a blog post. "This is all made possible by Google's data centers, which can process the enormous amounts of information gathered by our cars when mapping their terrain."
www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2370598,00.asp