Google recently gave the Singularity University Executive Program class at NASA Ames in Mountain View, California a sneak peak at its newest invention, a Prius that drives itself.
While little has been released on the project, Google has apparently been testing the Robocar, which is said to have navigated 180,000 miles of California’s roads, although always with a team of two human back-seat drivers. The Prius looks much like any other except for a Lidar, or laser radar, that sits on the top of the car and acts as the vehicle’s eyes. The mechanism, which cost $75,000, rotates 360 degrees and creates a three-dimensional point cloud of the car’s surroundings. The point cloud is then transferred in real-time to a server, located in the trunk of the car, and compared to maps generated previously in order to accurately navigate through its environment.
Having had no incidents so far, except for a rumored fender bender while under human control, the Robocar is the future of safety. Brad Templeton, SU facility and design team member, pointed out that 34,000 people are killed in the US and 1.2 million worldwide by human drivers every year with the average US citizen losing 41 hours a year to traffic congestion. All this can change as Robocars are engineered to avoid accidents. The technology behind the car allows it to analyze traffic patterns and intelligently maneuver itself to optimize safety, time and space. The potential benefits are tremendous.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who announced that 10% of the company is working on innovative projects that include self-driving car technology at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco, made it clear that the Robocar project is still in research and development. However the future is definitely arriving. Nevada legislature has already begun to draft laws regarding the governance of autonomous vehicles. Plus many other manufactures, including Audi, BMW, Infiniti, Mercedes, and Volvo, are already working on other semi-autonomous features for their vehicles.
Unfortunately, Google’s Prius Robocars will not go on sale anytime soon so we will just have to wait a little longer to fully enter the future of autonomous transportation. But as Brin pointed out, “There's a tremendous opportunity to improve the world."
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