google gets sci-fi

We’ve seen them on our streets festooned with high-tech cameras before: but nothing like this. Google‘s newest invention, the self-driving car, has been spotted cruising around California in their latest bid to secure world domination. Google’s automated cars use video cameras, radar sensors and lasers to weave through traffic and maps to navigate terrain. In their recent tests, Google have driven their robot cars for over 225,000km, including laps of Lake Tahoe and a trip over the Golden Gate bridge.

CNET describes the technology in further detail: ‘Google’s robot car is equipped with artificial-intelligence software; a rotating sensor on its roof, which can scan more than 200 feet in all directions to create a 3D map of the car’s environs; a video camera mounted behind the windshield, which helps the navigation system spot pedestrians, bicyclists, and traffic lights; three radar devices on the front bumper, and one in the back; and a sensor on one of the wheels that allows the system to determine the car’s position on the 3D map’. The car, equipped with a GPS and motion sensor, can also be instructed to drive cautiously or more aggressively.

Phillip K. Dick imagined it, Google invented it. But rather than a dystopian nightmare, Google dreams of allowing people to text, talk, eat, or apply make-up at their discretion while their car takes them exactly where they want to go. Interestingly, Google have chosen the Toyota Prius, a hybrid car, to test their technology, perhaps in a bid to preempt criticism from environmentalists, who might suggest that the new technology would make driving cars more desirable. (South Park dedicated an entire episode to the fashionable car, where owners would expel a gas called ‘smug’ through farts, and San Fransisco was in danger of ‘disappearing up its own asshole’.)

 

South Park parodies Prius drivers' sense of self-satisfaction

 

Google is pretty smug about the new invention, posting on its blog that:

We believe our technology has the potential to cut [the number of lives lost in road traffic accidents], perhaps by as much as half. We’re also confident that self-driving cars will transform car sharing, significantly reducing car usage, as well as help create the new “highway trains of tomorrow.” These highway trains should cut energy consumption while also increasing the number of people that can be transported on our major roads. In terms of time efficiency, the U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that people spend on average 52 minutes each working day commuting. Imagine being able to spend that time more productively.

We’ve always been optimistic about technology’s ability to advance society, which is why we have pushed so hard to improve the capabilities of self-driving cars beyond where they are today. While this project is very much in the experimental stage, it provides a glimpse of what transportation might look like in the future thanks to advanced computer science. And that future is very exciting.

If, as they say, their invention will help cut carbon emissions, that can only be a good thing. But if Phillip K. Dick has taught us anything, we might want to think about putting our lives in the hands (or, rather, the lasers) of technology. Nevertheless, this product is probably still a long way off.