Google Cars Drive Themselves

Smart Phones, Smart Texts, and now Smart Cars?

According to an article in The Huffington Post, Google is now working on their next big breakthrough: cars that drive themselves.

Project Leader Sebastian Thrun said that the goal is to “help prevent traffic accidents, free up people’s time and reduce carbon emissions” through ride sharing and “the new highway trains of tomorrow,” on Google’s corporate blog Saturday.

The car is never completely unmanned, as a backup driver will always be behind the wheel to monitor the software that makes it capable for the car to drive on its own. These “re-designed” Toyota Prius robot cars could change the way we look at driving forever.

The cars Google has been testing have journeyed a total of 140,000 miles on major roads in California without the need for human interaction for the most part.

Seven test cars have driven a total of 1,000 miles each without any human interaction at all, according to a New York Times report.

Thrun says that the new smart cars know traffic patterns, road maps, and speed limits. They use laser detectors to detect other cars, as well as radar sensors and video cameras. The cars are considered safer by engineers because they react faster than humans.

Industry leaders such as Volkswagon and Intel are currently working  hard to match the technology.

Luckily for Google, scientists who helped develop a similar technology for the government’s Defense Advance Research Projects Agency are developing the technology with technology giant.