It looks like the day when you see car drives around on their own without a driver is not very far. Google has developed the technology, and their self driven cars have already traveled 140,000 miles with just a little human intervention, and 1,000 miles with no human intervention at all!
I remember seeing videos of cars that park themselves and get awed, but this is super-awesome!
From the NYT:
The car is a project of Google, which has been working in secret but in plain view on vehicles that can drive themselves, using artificial-intelligence software that can sense anything near the car and mimic the decisions made by a human driver.
With someone behind the wheel to take control if something goes awry and a technician in the passenger seat to monitor the navigation system, seven test cars have driven 1,000 miles without human intervention and more than 140,000 miles with only occasional human control. One even drove itself down Lombard Street in San Francisco, one of the steepest and curviest streets in the nation. The only accident, engineers said, was when one Google car was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light.
Autonomous cars are years from mass production, but technologists who have long dreamed of them believe that they can transform society as profoundly as the Internet has.
The article later on states that mass implementation may still be 8 years away (optimistic), but that’s not that long now is it? Go read the whole article, and have a dreamy Sunday.
