Google Unveils Self Driving Car With NO STEERING WHEEL
Google today announced its own design for self-driving cars, which will drive people around without a steering wheel or pedals. It's the latest project from Google X, the company's skunkworks group headed by Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
The company has already shown off its own self-driving technology, which retrofits existing vehicles made by Toyota and Lexus. However this new version, which was announced by Brin at the Recode conference, is a new design that fits two people, and is driven entirely by computer using a variety of on-board computers and sensors.
Google says the program is currently in a prototype phase, but that it plans to build around 100 early versions of the vehicles for testing this summer. Those cars, which are reminiscent of a Fiat 500 mixed with Playmobil toys, will initially include manual controls in case something goes wrong, just like the company's current self-driving car program. After a pilot program in California, Google says it will develop a broader program with the help of partners, presumably for commercial use.
Google's overarching goal with the self-driving car program has been to develop vehicles that are safer than the ones driven by humans. 33,000 Americans die from auto accidents each year, with that number ballooning to 1.2 million worldwide, something Google believes it can trim by as much as 90 percent using a technology that can sense and react to things faster than humans.
My teacher talked about this in school. He said something about if there was to be a fatal accident with another manual car or something, that the car with say 1 person, would drive off the road and crash to save a family of 4 because saving 4 people is better than 1 or something. I don't know. it just sounded really scary if it happens like that.
My teacher talked about this in school. He said something about if there was to be a fatal accident with another manual car or something, that the car with say 1 person, would drive off the road and crash to save a family of 4 because saving 4 people is better than 1 or something. I don't know. it just sounded really scary if it happens like that.
As opposed to with humans, where both cars would crash and 5 people would die...
to the innovative minds at Google.