Google first revealed in 2010 that it had been working on self-driving
cars. This fits in with its work on mapping and software and might give
users extra time to surf the web, boosting Google’s profits. Last year
the company released a video of a blind man sitting in the driver’s seat
of one of these (albeit with a passenger as backup), being taken to buy
takeaway tacos and collect his dry cleaning. Sergey Brin, one of the
Internet company’s founders, expects its autonomous driving system to be
ready for the market in five years. That may be optimistic, but by the
2020s some cars that drive themselves most or all of the time could well
be in volume production. This will have big consequences.
The idea of self-driving cars as a means of reducing accidents and
congestion has been around for a long time. One of the most popular
exhibits at the 1939 New York World’s Fair was “Futurama”, a depiction
of a city with cars remotely controlled by radio. In the 1980s and 1990s
the European Commission sponsored a programme of research on automated
driving, Prometheus. In the mid-2000s the Pentagon’s research agency,
DARPA, launched its Grand Challenges, offering prizes to driverless cars
that did best at navigating a tricky course. In the first of these, in
2004, none of the robot cars completed the course. In the third, held in
2007, six cars made it. The winning team’s technical director was Mr
Urmson. Its main advantage over its rivals was that it had mapped the
course in fine detail, something that his current employers are busy
doing for the rest of the planet.
This is interesting , unfortunately based on the current driving patterns of people this make take longer to achieve , there is always somebody driving up your tail even tho the cannot overtake you. This technology will hopefully prevent this. I think that we will ultimately get there but how long this will take remains to be seen.
Driverless cars will have huge advantages. Commuting will become useful,
productive time, saving many people two or more hours a day that are
currently wasted. The number of accidents will fall by at least 90 per
cent, scientists believe, preventing thousands of deaths, by controlling
distances between vehicles, braking automatically and eliminating human
errors and reckless driving. The superior safety of driverless cars
means that it ought to be possible to reduce their weight, cutting back
on fuel consumption, and to redesign car shapes, making them more like
living rooms. Even car sickness could be reduced, with smoother driving.
http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21576224-one-day-every-car-may-come-invisible-chauffeur-look-no-hands
http://www.thestarphoenix.com/life/driverless+cars+will+change+lives/8328993/story.html
http://mashable.com/2012/02/19/driverless-cars-infographic/
No comments:
Post a Comment