Google testing automated cars!

Google has a penchant for making computers do all kinds of things. It’s latest project includes driving a car without the need of a person actually driving it. That basically means no driver is required. The logic for Google? Simple, they want to remove human errors which leads to accidents on the road.

Google announced that they have cars which drive themselves, using a on-board computer. They have completed over 160,000 miles quite safely.

How the Google car works?

• The car has a video camera which reads traffic lights and helps the car’s computer recognize traffic on the road.
• A radars which help decide positions of faraway objects.
• Another radar like device at the top which creates a 3D map of the car’s surroundings.
• This information is crunched by computers on-board the car and help it navigate around on the roads without the need of a driver.

What is driving Google?

• Genuine concerns of safety. Imagine cars which just did not allow people to drive rashly or over the speed limit. It will obviously make car travel safer. Most road safety research statistics show that rise in number of accidents are due to human errors.
• The other thing that could be this is a great way for Google to showcase their technology (android, google maps).

According to NY Times, the earliest we can see such cars is 2018. What do you think about Google’s latest experiment? Are they losing focus or are they focusing on something truly visionary? Do drop in your comments and views.