Self Driving Prius...My Next Car

I've seen them on the freeway. One time one was driving right in front of me. It was kinda scary.

 

Does th Google Prius use GPS or follow a wire buried in the road?

 

Wonder what operating system is uses...?

 

They use GPS. I've seen quite a bit of info on what Google is trying to do with self-driving cars. Very cool stuff! Decades down the line (or less) this could really make things safer and save many lives, not to mention just incredible technology. This is why I own stock in Google. They continue to try to stay on the bleeding edge of tech and innovation.

 

Those would spook me out. Glad we don't have them around Chicago - or do we?

If I had one, and it was needing its batteries charged, would it just decide to drive out of my driveway on its own, at a time of its own choosing? What if I had it in the garage, would it honk its squeaky horn to wake me up to open the garage door for it?

EDIT: Doh! that's what the HomeLink mirror is for - it would open and close the garage door by itself.

 

Here is the link from YouTube:

 

Let's be realistic here. Are you seriously worried that your car's gonna grow a brain and drive itself off without you knowing it. We'll be lucky to see this kind of technology in our life time.
For now, let's take one step at a time. Current consumer product can only barely self drive for 15 seconds or less and only on a straight line. Even then, it's no where near perfect. It sways out of center of the lane if not monitored.
They need to seriously refine the lane keep technology to a point where it's nearly 100% foolproof.
I wouldn't be surprised if the first production self driving car will only be semi self driving and only offers what the Prius Five/ATP has but more refined. It only function on certain road conditions. I can guarantee you that it wont work on 100% of the road. It won't have enough intelligence to determine every types of lane dividers like a human can. It will most likely only work on high speed roads without stop and go traffic like a freeway with clearly marked lane divider. Since the government is too poor to create a new infrastructure for self driving cars, it will have to adapt to current infrastructure.
Ultimately, the person on the driver's seat is responsible for the actions of self driving car. If my Prius has self driving feature, I wouldn't use it so I can goto sleep or read a book. I'll use it to see how it handles the road and traffic conditions to find its strength and weekness. Once I know what it's capable, then I'll use it when necessary.

 

There was an article in a recent issue of Wired. They are more advanced than cproaudio thinks, but still not ready for prime time.

 

"Open the rear hatch HAL....."
&$#@!!...open the hatch HAL!!!

 

It actually uses LIDAR (amongst other sensors, including GPS, but that's mostly for navigation) which is kept on that little top hat that the Google Car is wearing. It builds a 3D representation of everything around it many times a second.

 

I definitely think we will see quite a few of these sort of things out on the road in the next couple of decades. There was an article outlining what Google's plans were. It talked about how the cars are obviously connected (online) so they could both log their surroundings for future cars that take the same path as well as pull data from vehicles that have gone before. Such as, it will know where a tree always is or the exact width of roads and lanes. Therefore, the system will only get better and better over time while more and more data is compiled. Very exciting stuff!

 

All the current tech package needs now is better logic with the lane keep assist and kablam you have a self driving car that could easily drive on a freeway.

Currently the lane keep just "bounces" off the lane markers instead of keeping them centered. It's probably very intentionally "dumbed down" to keep people from turning on the drcc and lane keep then just sitting back and reading a paper or something. Too bad

 

What you have in Chicago and throughout the world may be worse. I'm refering to over powered two ton vehicles driven by egotistical humanoids that are distracted, impatient, texting and frequently lost.

 

Amen. Maybe we are better off with the computer driving the car.

 

If it is Vista it would be stopping for no reason.....

 

That's not even a question. Autonomous, or at least semi autonomous, vehicles would be statistically thousands of times safer than their human counterpart drivers. We routinely kill thousands of ourselves every day in traffic accidents. Unfortunately that one in a million mechanical or electrical problem that kills someone means we probably will not be seeing a company that's willing to take the risk on an actual commercial product anytime soon.

 

Markabele alluded to this, but in addition to the onboard sensors (LIDAR for seeing shapes, cameras for seeing colors), the cars carry data about their route obtained by driving over it several times under human control. Eventually, this could use data "from the cloud" from all the other self-driving cars out there, but for now, it requires extra mapping beforehand.

They gather data such as where the lane markings are; what they are (pedestrian crossing, lane dividers, turn lanes, on- and off-ramps, etc.); what objects are permanent (trees, bridges) and which are moving (other cars, pedestrians); and tons of other things. GPS isn't good enough to keep the car in the lane, so it's relying on this data to make decisions about where the lane is, which lane to use, etc.

It's very impressive; they've shown examples of it spotting pedestrians darting across the street, or becoming more assertive when needed to ensure it can (for example) get its turn at a 4-way stop sign.

Here's a good video about the technical stuff, if you have some time to burn:

(That's part 2 of 3; part 1 is more about the history of their team, originating with the DARPA Grand Challenge, and part 3 is about how they think it can change the world.)

 

Such cool stuff. I could watch videos of that all day long.