Google engineers have been working secretly on a self-driving car, and have already logged 140,000 miles in seven test vehicles. The vehicles are a modified Prius with a cluster of sensors that include GPS, Lidar, and cameras. The project is lead by Sebastian Thrun, the director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and the co-inventor of Google’s Street View service. The technology builds on the Darpa Grand Challenge winning team that successfully navigated a mixed course autonomously.
The aim of the exercise is to show how this approach could dramatically make roads safer, and more efficient — saving energy and saving lives. The technology builds upon their map database and 3D data collection, because a context is critical for this autonomous navigation to work. It’s a nice melding of geo technologies, with a practical application, showing what’s possible when we can rely on our knowledge of our surroundings.
Read more in this New York Times feature.
