[msb-alumni] Driverless cars are mastering city streets, Google says

From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2014 13:29:19 -0400
BlankThis article represents typical Detroit backward thinking.  We can't 
have a car with a little protrusion in the roofline, even though it will 
improve triffic utilization, represent a huge leap forward in safety, 
provide greater independence to people like me, and reduce pollution by 
enabling more car-sharing.
Steve
Class of '72

Driverless cars are mastering city streets, Google says By Justin Pritchard 
Associated Press

Google says that cars it has programmed to drive themselves have started to 
master the navigation of city streets and the challenges they bring, from 
jaywalkers to weaving bicyclists - a critical milestone for any commercially 
available self-driving car technology.

Despite the progress over the past year, the cars have plenty of learning to 
do before 2017, when the Silicon Valley tech giant hopes to get the 
technology to the public.

None of the traditional automakers has been so bullish. Instead, they have 
rolled out features incrementally, including technology that brakes and 
accelerates in stop-and-go traffic or keeps cars in their lanes. "I think 
the Google technology is great stuff. But I just don't see a quick pathway 
to the market," said David Alexander, a senior analyst with Navigant 
Research who specializes in autonomous vehicles. His projection is that 
self-driving cars will not be commercially available until 2025.

Google's self-driving cars already can navigate freeways comfortably, albeit 
with a driver ready to take control. In a new blog post, the project's 
leader said test cars now can handle thousands of urban situations that 
would have stumped them a year or two ago. "We're growing more optimistic 
that we're heading toward an achievable goal - a vehicle that operates fully 
without human intervention," project director Chris Urmson wrote. The 
benefits would include fewer accidents, since in principle machines can 
drive more safely than people.

Urmson's post was the company's first official update since 2012 on a 
project that is part of the company's secretive Google X lab. In initial 
iterations, human drivers would be expected to take control if the computer 
fails. The promise is that, eventually, there would be no need for a driver. 
Passengers could read, daydream, even sleep - or work - while the car 
drives.

That day is still years away, cautioned Navigant's Alexander. He noted that 
Google's retrofitted Lexus RX450H SUVs have a small tower on their roofs 
that uses lasers to map the surrounding area. Automakers want to hide that 
technology in a car's existing shape, he said. And even once cars are better 
than humans at driving, it will still take several years to get the 
technology from development to large-scale production.

Google has not said how it plans to market the technology. Options include 
collaborating with major carmakers or giving away the software, as the 
company did with its Android operating system. While Google has the balance 
sheet to invest in making cars, that is unlikely.

For now, Google is focused on the predictably common tasks of city driving. 
To deal with cyclists, engineers have taught the software to predict likely 
behavior based on thousands of encounters during the approximately 10,000 
miles the cars have driven autonomously on city streets, according to Google 
spokeswoman Courtney Hohne. The software plots the car's path accordingly - 
then reacts if something unexpected happens.

Before recent breakthroughs, Google had contemplated mapping all the world's 
stop signs. Now the technology can read stop signs, including those held in 
the hands of school crossing guards, Hohne said. While the car knows to 
stop, just when to start again is still a challenge, partly because the cars 
are programmed to drive defensively.
[msb-alumni] Driverless cars are mastering city streets, Google says

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