louisland

24th April 2012

Video reblogged from The Kid Should See This. with 19 notes

“Hey kiddo, did you know that there’s a car that drives itself?” And so began the kid’s introduction to Google’s Driverless Car. From PC Mag:

Google released the video to celebrate that it has safely completed 200,000 miles of computer-lead driving.

The video shows [Steve] Mahan sitting in the driver’s seat as the car steers itself, using radar and lasers to make sure the road is clear. The car takes him through the drive-through of Taco Bell, then to the dry cleaners as Mahan jokes that “this is some of the best driving I’ve ever done.”

“Ninety-five percent of my vision is gone, I’m well past legally blind,” Mahan says in the video. ”Where this would change my life is to give me the independence and flexibility to go the places I both want to go and need to go, when I need to do those things.”

Google said it arranged Mahan’s ride through a carefully programmed route as a special test outside of its core research efforts.

“We organized this test as a technical experiment, but we think it’s also a promising look at what autonomous technology may one day deliver if rigorous technology and safety standards can be met,”

As I think so often when posting to TKSST: The future is now (finally)!