Google Secret Project 'Driverless Car' Finally Hit The Raods for Test Drive!!!!!

First, Google wanted to bring you search results. Then they wanted to bring you your TV, phone and even potentially your broadband. Now it seems that the ever expanding horizons of the Google engineers have been set on driving you to work.

The Google Driverless Car is a project by Google that involves developing technology for cars that can drive themselves.



Google, the world’s most popular search engine, is also looking to operating other types of engines. The company has developed a technology that allows cars to drive automatically and thus releasing the human driver to other things during the drive.

The internet giant revealed an experiment to an automated driving system for cars; the automatic car uses a video camera, radar sensors and laser beams to “see” peripheral car movement.
The system combines information gathered for Google Street View with artificial intelligence software that combines input from video cameras inside the car, a LIDAR sensor on top of the vehicle, radar sensors on the front of the vehicle and a position sensor attached to one of the rear wheels that helps locate the car's position on the map. As of 2010, Google has tested several vehicles equipped with the system, driving 1,000 miles (1,600 km) without any human intervention, in addition to 140,000 miles (230,000 km) with occasional human intervention. Google anticipates that the increased accuracy of its automated driving system could help reduce the number of traffic-related injuries and deaths, while using energy and space on roadways more efficiently.

The project team has equipped a test fleet of seven vehicles, consisting of six Toyota Priuses and an Audi TT, each accompanied in the driver's seat by one of a dozen drivers with unblemished driving records and in the passenger seat by one of Google's engineers. The vehicles have driven 140,000 miles with the system, including 1,000 miles traveled without any manual intervention, the only accident occurring when one of the cars was rear-ended while stopped at a red light. The car has traversed San Francisco's Lombard Street, famed for its steep hairpin turns and through city traffic. The vehicles have driven over the Golden Gate Bridge and on the Pacific Coast Highway, and have circled Lake Tahoe. The system drives at the speed limit it has stored on its maps and maintains its distance from other vehicles using its system of sensors. The system provides an override that allows a human driver to take control of the car by stepping on the brake or turning the wheel, not unlike cruise control systems already in cars.