> Google tests cars that can steer without drivers
> October 10, 2010 - 4:44pm
> By DANIEL WAGNER
> AP Business Writer
>
> WASHINGTON (AP) - Google Inc. is road-testing cars that steer, stop and
> start without a human driver, the company says.
>
> The cars have traveled a total of 140,000 miles on major California roads
> without much human intervention, according to a posting Saturday on
> Google's
> corporate blog.
>
> The goal is to "help prevent traffic accidents, free up people's time and
> reduce carbon emissions," project leader Sebastian Thrun wrote in the blog
> post.
>
> It's not the first signal that Google wants to change how people get form
> place to place. In a speech Sept. 29 before 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 New York Times published a report on the development earlier Sunday.
>
> The Mountainview, 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 cars know speed limits, traffic patterns and road maps. They use video
> cameras, radar sensors and lasers to detect other cars, Thrun's posting
> says.
>
> Driving between Northern California and Southern California, the cars have
> navigated San Francisco's Lombard Street, Los Angeles' Hollywood Blvd. and
> the 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 cars are never unmanned, Thrun wrote. He said a backup driver is
> always
> behind the wheel to monitor the software.
>
> It 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.


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