Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) says it has turned a corner in its pursuit of a car that can drive itself.
The leader of the tech giant’s driverless car project wrote in a blog post Monday that test vehicles are becoming far more adept at city driving. They already can comfortably handle freeways.
“Jaywalking pedestrians. Cars lurching out of hidden driveways. Double-parked delivery trucks blocking your lane and your view. At a busy time of day, a typical city street can leave even experienced drivers sweaty-palmed and irritable. We all dream of a world in which city centers are freed of congestion from cars circling for parking (PDF) and have fewer intersections made dangerous by distracted drivers. That’s why over the last year we’ve shifted the focus of the Google self-driving car project onto mastering city street driving,” Google says.
“Since our last update, we’ve logged thousands of miles on the streets of our hometown of Mountain View, Calif. A mile of city driving is much more complex than a mile of freeway driving, with hundreds of different objects moving according to different rules of the road in a small area. We’ve improved our software so it can detect hundreds of distinct objects simultaneously—pedestrians, buses, a stop sign held up by a crossing guard, or a cyclist making gestures that indicate a possible turn. A self-driving vehicle can pay attention to all of these things in a way that a human physically can’t—and it never gets tired or distracted.”
City driving presents a virtual obstacle course of jaywalkers, bicyclists and blind corners. Google says the cars can now negotiate thousands of urban situations that would have stumped them a year or two ago.
To navigate and avoid crashes, Google’s fleet of retrofitted Lexus SUVs relies on sensors such as lasers and radar. A driver is ready to take over – if needed.
Google wants to get the technology to the public by 2017.
You car read the full Google blog online.
Google also has made a video available about the project.
