Self-Driving Car

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As you may hear about or not, Google is launching their Self-driving car to the public but not for sale at this point of time. Many car companies such as BMW is also working on the self-driving technology since technology is based on help human being do less and less work. Link below is a self-drifting (it used the word “first” in the video while I do not think this is the case, I do saw a drifting video Google lunched before while sad for that I could not find it again, so just watch it if you would like to) BMW M235i, it looks cool even though it is little bit a shame for a car like to drink by a computer that on a track on Las Vegas. But it shows us that the ability for nowadays technology to process road informations in a safe enough period of time and be able to respond to that.

 

While today we still gonna talk about Google’s project. They have been working on this for a long time and I believe they may also become the pioneers in this industry if one day self-driving car is come to our general public. I think that day is coming soon, what do you think?

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The Google Self-Driving Car is a project by Google that involves developing technology for autonomous cars, mainly electric cars. The software powering Google’s cars is called Google Chauffeur. Lettering on the side of each car identifies it as a “self-driving car”. The project is currently being led by Google engineer Sebastian Thrun, former director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and co-inventor of Google Street View. Thrun’s team at Stanford created the robotic vehicle Stanley which won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge and its US$2 million prize from the United States Department of Defense($2 Million dollars!!! It’s more than today’s PowerBall. Keep blogging maybe one day one of us will become a scientist like Andrew or him). The team developing the system consisted of 15 engineers working for Google, including Chris Urmson, Mike Montemerlo, and Anthony Levandowski who had worked on the DARPA Grand and Urban Challenges.

Normally, driverless cars can realize the automation depending on technologies such like LIDAR (Laser Illuminating Detection and Ranging), high-powered cameras, positioning (GPS), Sonar, and driving-control software.The core of driverless cars is the technology called autonomous, of course the manufacturing of vehicle is also essential. Autonomous means having the ability to self-government. Autonomous control implies good performance under significant uncertainties in the environment for extended periods of time and the ability to compensate for system failures without external intervention. It is often suggested to extend the capabilities of an autonomous car by implementing communication networks both for collision avoidance and for traffic management. By bringing in these outside influences in the decision process, some would no longer regard the car’s behavior or capabilities as autonomous but rather “life” like.

Till now even though the people who current working on the those projects have shown us self driving car is ready to rock. While I think it still will face a huge amount of questions no matter how well prepared and how many experiments they did on the road.

 

 

3 thoughts on “Self-Driving Car

  1. Mehmet Fevzi Eygoren

    Wow this is a really cool post. I wonder what the future holds in regard to self driving cars. If cars can drive by themselves, then there could be taxi services based on self driving cars. No hourly wages, no social security, no insurance. This would really change some parts of the Economy. I think that this could be beneficial and also dangerous. It would also take away a lot of jobs like uber, taxi drivers, maybe busses, and chauffeurs.

  2. Connor Ethan Ogden

    I have very mixed feelings about the implication of self-driving cars in the future. I understand that they will end up being so much safer than manual driving (Googles car already drives to almost perfection), but at the same time, I really just enjoy driving. I feel like a lot of people will feel the same way and that self driving cars may become somewhat controversial. Another thing I read about (which seems a bit radical) is that there is a community of people protesting self driving cars because it limits peoples ability to “escape danger” and since they are computer based could also be hacked, which would jeopardize the safety of the passengers. It will be interesting to see the debate that comes with these new cars!

  3. Yuxing Cai

    Hi!! I am a big tech-fans and I have been follow up this topic for a long time!! I am impressed that it is possible that our car can drive by themselves!! Audi and Benz has made a lot of progress on this technology and their car show on exhibition is really cool. Here is some new about Benz Self-driving car. hope you like it: Click Here

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