The only way we’d trust Google and its self-driving cars to transport us safely around the city would be if everyone else was using a driverless vehicle too. The company has been working on some fantastic technology to power cars which can transport people from one place to another without human guidance.
The only problem is that there are too many reckless, speed-freaks out there. What if you were being driven around on a busy highway and the whole system suddenly jammed? Would you be able to snap to attention and get your hands on the wheel on time after zoning off and letting the autonomous technology do your job?
We’re sure the engineers at Google have already thought about all of this, even if we’re rather paranoid on the subject of being able to perfect such technology through human input. The video above shows you what being driving around by an AI-powered car looks like.
The software, sensors and accompanying hardware are capable of detecting vehicles approaching from behind, reading traffic lights, recognizing orange road cones, understanding when another driver or a cyclist puts out their arm to indicate which direction they’re heading for and so on.
Google says the advantage of self-driving technology such as the one it is testing out, is that it never gets sleepy or tired like a human being and can analyze comparably more details from its surroundings. So in a way, this should make it better at navigating roads safely.
But forget about having to convince authorities about the advantages of allowing such four-wheelers to run wild on the streets. Google still has to make the final product a commercially viable one. It might take years before this can happen and even more time than that before people trust a machine for a chauffeur.
Google’s self-driving cars have covered 700,000 autonomous miles of testing and are now being tried out in the real-world scenario in California.