Google quietly revealed a hidden secret of the Google Streetview programme – it’s been using driverless cars. In typical Google fashion, the news that the search giant has pushed us one step closer to Skynet was revealed in a blog post. It’s got us wondering: are Google driverless cars the future of motoring and a brilliant innovation for making our roads safer or a recipe for disaster?
Google engineer, Sebastian Thrun, outed Google’s driverless car project on the official Google blog. He explained that the Google driverless cars have been regularly undertaking journeys around San Francisco: “Manned by trained operators [they] drove from our Mountain View campus to our Santa Monica office and on to Hollywood Boulevard…all in all, our self-driving cars have logged over 140,000 miles. We think this is a first in robotics research.”
The self-driving Google Streetview cars use a combination of video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to detect other traffic along with detailed maps (collected by human drivers) to navigate. Google says the driverless cars are possible because of the amount of processing power harnessed by its data centres.
The Google driverless car team is made up of engineers who’ve previously taken part in the DARPA Challenge which aims to test the capabilities of autonomous vehicles in races across deserts in the US. Anthony Levandowski, a member of the Google self-driving car team, created the world’s first autonomous motorcycle and a pizza-delivering Prius that operated without a human driver.
Google says safety is key with the driverless cars. It says the cars are never unmanned and that the driver can take control as easily as “one disengages cruise control”. Meanwhile a trained software operator plays co-pilot monitoring the car’s software to ensure it’s not about to do a H.A.L and go berserk.
Google predicts that the self-driving cars could cut the number of traffic accidents (which claim over 1.2m lives globally right now) and increase the amount of car sharing. But is it being too optimistic? Questions will obviously surround the safety and security issues that come with deploying automated vehicles. Wouldn’t remote control cars be a target too juicy for some malicious hacker to attack?
Google admits that the project is still in a very experimental stage and it’s hard not to admire the sheer level of engineering ingenuity at work. But are you happy about the prospect of self-driving cars taking to the road? Hit the comments and join the debate…
Out now | £NA | Google
