[gps-talkusers] self driving car released in 2008

Tangential to the topics on this list I know but GM is releasing "traffic assist" which allows the car to drive itself, even and especially in heavy traffic. Using GPS, lasers, cameras and some interesting artificial vision logic GM has a car that now can literally drive itself. Sure there's still need for a sited human operator but not as much and the trend is an interesting one. If you look at some of the projections, some folks feel in 20 - 30 years there will be whole lanes of most highways designated for automated / computer controled driving. One article I just read projected that there would be dedicated lanes where humans would not be allowed to drive the car but the top end speeds would exceed 150 to 200. Since public transit is impracticle, especially in the US, using micro vehicles that are self driving has a lot of advantages and if the logic is beefed up enough clearly we could be helped as well. Not any time soon though. Of course, the way things are going, blindness could be a non starter of an issue by the turn of this century anyway. (wonder if we'll have self navigating cars or artificial vision first?) 

Here's an interesting article dealing with GM's offering.

http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/News/articleId=107011#

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