I was driving today and saw this Prius. I grabbed a quick picture with my cell phone. The gizmo on top was spinning around quickly, so I doubt it is a camera. The cup-shaped spinning object on top had slits in it; maybe the wind was making it spin. There weren't any markings on the car to identify it. I whited out the license plate number myself, because it seemed like the nice thing to do.
This looks like a LIDAR system, which is essentially a laser based radar system. Given the other instrumentation, I suspect this Prius is part of an auto-driving research study. Tom
could be a new gen google street view car ... the ones i have seen tho have a bigger / higer camera mount ...
Tom is right. It's the auto-drive device, but if you look closely into the module you can see a little alien controlling the car, a la Men In Black.
Google self-driving car: Google’s Self-Driving Car Spotted On The Highway Almost A Year Ago (Oh, And Scoble) [Video]
More info at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/science/10google.html. If you can't read the whole article, do a Google search for "Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic".
We've seen three of them in a row going up Highway 50... if they follow the lanes by the stripes /lane divider lines then they are a better driver than most I have to commute with... especially considering the lines are all screwed up and don't point correctly.
Yep . . . I saw one of these driverless rides down in the San diego area maybe 3 or 4 years ago: Lot of Junk, in the trunk, too: one servo goes out, and you kiss it good bye. .
The pedals are driven by servos, as is the steering wheel. These inputs have sensors to detect human input - if you take control of the wheel, brake or accelerator, the AI hands control over to the human in the driver seat. I've actually been in the older model - here's a shot I took from the passenger seat.
Perhaps it's the Passat Wagon at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge_%282007%29#Race_Participants_.26_Results ? Stanford's team was headed up by Sebastian Thrun who is now doing this work for Google. Here's a blog entry from him: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/what-were-driving-at.html.
