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Google demos driverless cars

engadget.com

71–80 of 118 posts

Re: Google demos driverless cars

#71

I would really like this on top gear and compare it to the other drivers on their closed course. I wonder how well it would do in their celebrity challenge that they do every episode?

They already did it a few years ago in a self-driving BMW. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRF_KaWzxq4

Re: Google demos driverless cars

#72
post #70
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That idea sounds too simple to be true, but I'd file that under "crazy enough to work"

The craziest ideas are the best ;) and what's crazier: a car on rails or a self driving Prius from a search and advertising company ?

After looking at google maps/earth, especially street view, I would say they used driving data from that to feed the car driving learning mechanism.

Re: Google demos driverless cars

#74

If Google plays their cards right over the next several years, this could easily produce more revenue for them than ads do.

Did Google demo something that car companies haven't been working on for many years, and demonstrated years ago?

Re: Google demos driverless cars

#75
post #26
post #14

Driverless cars are not going anywhere until they can prove themselves 20% superior than the average driver in ALL the following conditions: Dealing with Rain (visibility and deep water on the road), Hard to see tire eating potholes causing damage, Ice and snow (on road and caking on instruments), Snow accumulation ruts, causing car to move unexpectedly, Evasive driving - cutting across a lawn, (avoiding the pool and…

Interestingly enough, a car which simply refuses to drive in hurricanes, hailstorms, white-out snow, and so forth would be rather more than 20% superior to the average driver. So that's easily dealt with - if insufficient sensory data is available, either hand control over to the driver or, if possible, pull to the side of the road. The average driver likely does really horrible in large crashes and pileups, so merel…

Problem is, in twenty years, the car would be handing over to a really amateurish driver.

Re: Google demos driverless cars

#76
post #57

If Google plays their cards right over the next several years, this could easily produce more revenue for them than ads do.

There are quite a few teams working on driveless cars. for example six won the last DARPA challenge , a european funded vehicle won did a 8000 miles trip from italy to china , israel is using similar technologies for military purposes, and GM and folksvagen is working on systems. from the other side , google's total investment in the project is a yearly $15 million ,which is not unsourmountable. I don't have a very d…

Google hired many of those involved in the DARPA Urban challenge, and they are leading the effort. In particular, Sebastian Thrun, who appears to be in charge of Google's program, was the head of the winning Stanford team.

Additionally, Google's cars are already far more sophisticated than those that won the Challenge, which involved navigating a relatively simplistic simulated urban environment. According to their blog post on the subject [0] Google has been running their autonomous cars on real roads and highways in real traffic, a dramatically harder problem.

[0] http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/what-were-driving-at....

Re: Google demos driverless cars

#77
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine cars on demand. You don't own a car, you text a car to get you to work at 8:30, the car picks you up at home, drops you off (no parking space required) and goes on to the next ride. I can't wait to see driverless cars.

Almost like a taxi? I guess with driverless it's more like cloud carpooling.

It'd be cheaper than a taxi since there's no driver to pay.

Re: Google demos driverless cars

#78
post #60

The iPhone has been able to drive cars since version 3.0.1. Google should really be focusing on making lists more springy at their ends instead of this sort of trivial thing.

Is this a serious post ? How does an iphone "drive" a car ? If you think GPS and turn by turn instructions is the same thing has actually controlling the car on a road, you couldn't possibily be more wrong ... Your second point is strange too, do you actually think that a big tech company like google should not try to research new stuff outside of its comfort zone ? Or because one of their product is imperfect, they…

Maybe this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHDwKT564Kk&feature=playe...

Re: Google demos driverless cars

#80
This is amazing. I remember an old CMU paper from 1996 about AI driven cars being one of the reasons I decided to go to grad school. It's a classic IMO, and a very accessible introduction to the whole problem: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.15.4... (click the cached pdf icon in the top right corner). I imagine the solutions have moved on since then though.

Anyone care to hack up a little frontside car camera and steering position sensors?

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