[stylist] Google tests cars that can steer without drivers

[Joe Orozco]

Ah, look at this?  For all the nay-sayers like myself who think cars that
drive themselves are a thing of pipe dreams.  Maybe a reconsideration is in
order, but only just maybe.--Joe

Google tests cars that can steer without drivers

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By DANIEL WAGNER
The Associated Press 
Sunday, October 10, 2010; 6:23 PM 

WASHINGTON -- Google Inc. is road-testing cars that steer, stop and start
without a human driver, the company says. 

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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,'" project leader Sebastian Thrun wrote Saturday on Google's
corporate blog. 

The cars are never unmanned, Thrun wrote. He said a backup driver is always
behind the wheel to monitor the software. 

It's not the first signal that Google wants to change how people get from
place to place. In a speech Sept. 29 at the TechCrunch "Disrupt" conference,
Google CEO Eric Schmidt said "your car should drive itself. It just makes
sense." 

"It's a bug that cars were invented before computers," Schmidt said. 

The cars have traveled a total of 140,000 miles on major California roads
without much human intervention, according to Google's corporate blog. 

The Mountain View, Calif.-based technology giant has sent seven test cars a
total of 1,000 miles without a human touching the controls at all, the New
York Times reported. The newspaper published a report on the cars earlier
Sunday. 

The cars know speed limits, traffic patterns and road maps, Thrun's posting
says. They use video cameras, radar sensors and lasers to detect other cars.


Driving between Northern California and Southern California, the cars have
navigated San Francisco's curvy Lombard Street, Los Angeles' Hollywood
Boulevard and the cliff-hugging Pacific Coast Highway, the blog says. 

Engineers consider the cars safer because they react more quickly than
humans, the New York Times said. It said Google has not revealed how it
hopes to profit from the research. 

The company is flush with cash, though, and pushing numerous projects such
as the cars that are unrelated to its core business, said Rob Enderle,
principal analyst with the Enderle Group in San Jose, Calif. 

"The word 'focus' is a word Google has never learned," Enderle said,
pointing to projects involving electricity distribution, vehicle design and
artificial intelligence. He said cars that can drive themselves would allow
commuters more time to surf the web, something Google would encourage. 

Still, Enderle said, industry leaders such as Volkswagen and Intel Corp. are
working on similar technology. He said "driverless" vehicles will make
computers more like the robots imagined in the 1920s, rather than the
tabletop data processors we use today. 

The blog says the technology is being developed by scientists who were
involved in an earlier set of unmanned car races organized by the
government's Defense Advance Research Projects Agency. 

---- 

AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke in San Francisco contributed to this
report.