You’ve probably heard by now that Google has made a lot of headway in an (up-’til-now) stealth project on creating self driving cars. You can read the official Google blog post here.
Naturally, what you will read at Google’s official blog is the PR department sanctioned version. I wrote some time ago about how much Google Street View must be costing with all those cars and paid drivers around the world photographing every nook and cranny. So here’s a SeekGeek translation of selected bits of the official Google cars blog post:
Larry and Sergey founded Google because they wanted to help solve really big problems using technology. And one of the big problems we’re working on today is car safety and efficiency. [Another little problem we at Google have is the escalating costs of our Street View program and people have begun questioning our agenda behind that loss-making project] Our goal is to help prevent traffic accidents, free up people’s time and reduce carbon emissions by fundamentally changing car use. [Our goal is to ultimately have all our Street View cars unmanned].
Our automated cars use video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to “see” other traffic, as well as detailed maps (which we collect using manually driven vehicles) to navigate the road ahead. [So if you see any sinister cameras pointing out these cars, don’t worry, we’re not trying to collect more data for Street View – we merely have to see our way around].
Safety Street View cost reduction has been our first priority in this project.
According to the World Health Organization Our Finance Department , more than 1.2 million lives dollars are lost every year week in road traffic accidents costs incurred by Street View. We believe our technology has the potential to cut that number, perhaps by as much as half. We’re also confident that self-driving cars will transform car sharing Street View, significantly reducing car usage [costs], as well as help create the new “highway trains of tomorrow.” total privacy onslaught of Google Street View. These highway trains should cut energy consumption Street View running costs while also increasing the number of people photos and wi-fi snooping transported taken on our major roads. In terms of time cost efficiency, the U.S. Department of Transportation Google Finance Department estimates that people human-driven cars spend on average 52 minutes dollars more each working day commuting. Imagine being able to spend save that time money more productively.
While this project is very much in the experimental stage, it provides a glimpse of what transportation surveillance might look like in the future thanks to advanced computer science. And that future is very exciting scary.
Note to self: Hmmm… its been over 6 months and no Google Page Rank on this site yet. But wait… there’s no spam. Maybe I should try being less nasty to the big G ?