One of five Google UGV Prii (7th car is an Audi TT)
“It’s a bug that cars were invented before computers. Your car should drive itself. It just makes sense," says Google's CEO Eric Schmidt.
Google has admitted to having 7 cars that are unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) that have logged a total of 140,000 miles on California roads and highways. Schmidt states the cars have diven, "from our Mountain View campus to our Santa Monica office and on to Hollywood Boulevard. They’ve driven down Lombard Street, crossed the Golden Gate bridge, navigated the Pacific Coast Highway, and even made it all the way around Lake Tahoe."
The cars use cameras, laser range finders, radar sensors, GPS, and Google's massive data centers for processing large amounts of data the cars collect when mapping the terrain. After a DARPA challenge to make an automated vehicle that would drive unmanned what so ever, Google collected all the best engineers from the competition to work on their UGV. The result, over 140,000 miles driven with only one accident. And that was someone else rear-ending the Googlemobile. For the record, each Google UGV has a driver in the car that could take over in case of an emergency.
Now Google is pushing Nevada State Assembly Bill No. 511 may allow driverless cars on the road, and to give them a designated area for testing. In a further act of Google Law, they are pushing for an additional law that would allow the backup drivers of the UGV the ability to text while riding. This additional law, as you might imagine, has not made much progress.
Eavesdropper
