Hasta La Gadget!

Google Computer-Driven Prius from Ben Tseitlin on Vimeo.

“[W]e have developed technology for cars that can drive themselves.” Hang on, what? It’s never a good sign when life imitates an early Stephen King novel… Those are the words of Sebastian Thrun, Google’s Distinguished Software Engineer, posted to the Official blog. The blogs of the rest of the world naturally responded with a collective, “wait–what?”

Google has, in fact, created a self-driving car–not only that, the company took it on a test drive down the coast of California, from its Mountain View campus to its office in Santa Monica. Then, naturally, they cruised the thing down Hollywood Boulevard. Word is that the car really wanted to check out the selection at Amoeba Records.

And this isn’t the first time Google has taken the car out into the wild. Past exertions have included Lombard Street (the world famous “crookedest street”), the Golden Gate, the Pacific Coast Highway, and the circumference of Lake Tahoe. The car has driven some 140,000 miles–with trained operators on-board, naturally.

The goal of the vehicle is “to help prevent traffic accidents, free up people’s time and reduce carbon emissions by fundamentally changing car use,” according to the company. The cars (yes, cars plural) utilize video cameras, radar sensors, and lasers (that’s how you know it’s from the future) to spot other traffic. Built-in maps, meanwhile, help the vehicles navigate the road.

The car is in constant contact with Google’s data centers, which process all of the information gathered by the vehicles.

In all, Google seems confident of the potential of its crazy future car, “We’re also confident that self-driving cars will transform car sharing, significantly reducing car usage, as well as help create the new ‘highway trains of tomorrow.’ ” Anyone else think that this is beginning to sound like an exhibit from the 1964 World’s Fair?

What if your car doesn’t have onboard automatic crash notification? Collision Watch, a $99 Droid phone application slated for release by year’s end, will use your cellphone’s GPS sensors and built-in accelerometer to determine a likely crash, then send up to two notifications and a if needed a call to 911.

Most electric cars are two seats, a monster battery pack, and not much luggage space. A brief ride in the Nissan Leaf, due to ship shortly, is enough to convince you that an electric car can be roomy inside and have decent trunk space. Driving the Leaf is like driving most any other modern compact car: fun to drive, easy to maneuver, relatively uneventful. With gasoline so cheap, a $25,000 electric no bargain. As a steppingstone to the future of cars, it’s breathtaking.

If you’re really tired of what’s on the radio these days and you’re willing to put down a monthly subscription fee for satellite radio to get a wider variety of listening options, Sirius XM wants your business. If you’d rather do that without re-wiring your car or replacing your in-dash unit to accommodate a satellite radio receiver, the new XM Snap FM Transmitter from Sirius XM can help you listen to your favorite satellite stations in virtually any car with an FM radio.

The XM Snap plugs into your car’s power adapter (or cigarette lighter, if your car is old enough to have one) to charge, and when you tune the device to an open FM station that’s not occupied by an FM radio station in your area, you can then tune your car radio to the same frequency to hear your satellite radio selection.

The XM Snap doesn’t get around the problem with most FM transmitters: namely that the audio quality leaves a lot to be desired and areas with heavily congested airwaves make it difficult to find an open frequency.  Even so, if you’re in a rental and can’t live without Sirius XM or just don’t want to drop the cash on a new head-unit, the $59.99 XM Snap may be a worthwhile option when it comes out in October.
 

Recently, Google announced the winners of their Project 10^100, which awarded multi-million start-up funds to promising, world-changing ideas. One of Google’s million-dollar idea babies was for New Zealand-based Shweeb and their innovative take on public transportation. But Shweeb–if it ever manages its way down from an ivory tower and into reality–isn’t innovative as much as it is revolutionary.

Like all truly forward thinking ideas, Shweeb seems completely nuts at first glance. As a tech blogger I’d love nothing more than to mock Google and it’s choice of Shweeb with its poor-man’s take on the Jetsons opening sequence. But the more you read about it, the more Shweeb’s innovative take urban transport makes a whole lot of sense.

The idea in a plexiglas nutshell is to combine the concept of a subway with urban bike lanes (like many cities, my own Brooklyn has been crosshatched with newly designated bike lanes over the past year). Shweeb transport consists of self-propelled “pods” that are tethered to ultra-thin (8-inch) monorail tracks that extend over and through urban landscapes. The pods are completely encased and aerodynamically-designed to cut down on wind resistance. Additionally, the user leans back within the pod with the legs forward, further cutting down on wind drag. According to the Shweeb site, riders should be able to go much faster than a conventional self-propelled bicycle with less work. Or as they boast, their tech “requires less energy to cover a given distance than any other vehicle on earth.”

The current concept is that, like a subway, the Shweeb lines would run between population and business centers. Riders would pick up a pod at a hub in their neighborhood and ride them into a hub near work. Overall, the system might work something like a self-propelled city-wide ski lift. Shweeb promises that they will “soon announce the location where we will
build the first transit Shweeb for public use.”

But the main advantage of Shweeb is that it is completely carbon-free in its everyday function. All the energy is muscle powered. As populations explode, dense urban living is an inevitable reality for our species. Sustainable technologies like Shweeb will help make the civilizations of the future keep themselves civilized.

Video of Shweeb in action after the jump.