Google moves a step closer to creating fully functioning driverless cars
Google has taken significant steps towards the creation of driverless cars, according to a blog post from the tech giant.
The company has been working on the idea for almost four years and since recent improvements in its software it has logged “thousands of miles” on the streets of Mountain View, California.
The post stated: “A mile of city driving is much more complex than a mile of freeway driving, with hundreds of different objects moving according to different rules of the road in a small area. We’ve improved our software so it can detect hundreds of distinct objects simultaneously—pedestrians, buses, a stop sign held up by a crossing guard, or a cyclist making gestures that indicate a possible turn.
“A self-driving vehicle can pay attention to all of these things in a way that a human physically can’t—and it never gets tired or distracted. As it turns out, 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 added: “We still have lots of problems to solve, including teaching the car to drive more streets in Mountain View before we tackle another town, but thousands of situations on city streets that would have stumped us two years ago can now be navigated autonomously.
“Our vehicles have now logged nearly 700,000 autonomous miles, and with every passing mile we’re growing more optimistic that we’re heading toward an achievable goal—a vehicle that operates fully without human intervention.