Watch Google’s autonomous car navigate the streets

Google’s autonomous cars are taking test drives by its offices in Mountain View, California in hopes to one day dominate the roadways. The cars can drive about on their own volition depending on the road’s obstacles like traffic or pedestrians. Thus far, it has begun mastering city street driving. The team at Google has focused on getting the car to hone its city street driving skills since there are many more real time obstacles that occur than when driving on a freeway. The self-driving car must be able to absorb and process its entire surroundings to safely navigate around roadways.  

The car’s highly advanced software and on-board computer processes everything more rapidly than when humans are behind the wheel. It can analyze the road’s situation and keep its constant, vigilant attention on the road while driving. While humans can start getting tired or distracted while on the road, computers stay on task at all times without any interference.

The director of this project, Chris Urmson, stated, “What looks chaotic and random on a city street to the human eye is actually fairly predictable to a computer. As we’ve encountered thousands of different situations, we’ve built software models of what to expect, from the likely (a car stopping at a red light) to the unlikely (blowing through it).”

Google still has to further the development of this tech before these cars hit the road for public use. These cars still have to learn how to drive along more streets in the Mountain View vicinity before test driving in other cities across America. Urmson stated that “thousands of situations on city streets that would have stumped us two years ago can now be navigated autonomously.” This progress is substantial to this car’s advancements. So far, the self-driving cars have traversed over 700,000 miles. The end goal will eventually be to mass-produce and distribute autonomous cars that can operate without people.

Story via GoogleBlog