Hasta La Gadget!

Long hailed as one of the safest car producers in the world, Volvo hopes to retain that reputation by introducing vehicles that can avoid passenger injuries on their own by the year 2020. Its plans hinge on eliminating the largest cause of road accidents — the drivers themselves. The head of development for the program is convinced that driver-less cars are the future and that Volvo will be the first one there. The main technology underpinning Volvo’s autonomous automobiles is wireless internet, which would enable each car to be assigned a certain point on the road and give different vehicles the ability to interact with each other. The company is preparing to release an initial batch of autonomous vehicles, capable of speeds of up to 31 miles per hour, in 2014. We know from the SARTRE project that the automaker has been able to achieve autonomous speeds of 53 miles per hour in traffic for long distances, though they aren’t disclosing when those higher-speed prototypes would be publicly available.

Filed under: Transportation

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Via: Autopia (Wired)

Source: Driver’s Seat (WSJ)

A future that has self-driving cars inside are certainly not a daunting thought at all – in fact, I believe that many people who have to slug through traffic gridlocks each day as they head off to work will more than appreciate a self-driving car, especially when you do not need to engage the services of a human driver, letting you rest and relax in the vehicle’s cabin all by yourself. One of Google’s more successful side projects has been the self-driving car that you see above, and we are proud to say that this particular ride has clocked up more than 300,000 miles on its odometer, where its journey has seen the vehicle cover a huge range of traffic conditions, without a single accident happening under the guidance of its computer control.

This is definitely progress in the right direction, but I would assume that there is still plenty of work left to be done for the future. In order to deliver the best kind of self-driving vehicle experience, Google believes that they will still need to master various road conditions such as snow-covered roadways, interpret temporary construction signals while juggling a slew of other rather tricky situations which everyday drivers encounter.

Needless to say, members of the Google self-driving car team will begin to use the vehicles in a solo ride instead of being in pairs, and this new way of travel will be used to test out everyday routes such as commuting to work. Bear in mind that this would mark an important milestone, since it would brings such technology one step closer to every commuter. What would you do in a self-driving car if you knew you had an hour or so during the commute? Would you take that opportunity and doze off to catch up on your beauty sleep, or do you prefer to utilize the freed up time and indulge in a little bit of reading instead?

Many of the team members will also continue to carry out tests on their algorithms on a new type of vehicle that Google has already added to the self-driving car family over the past few months, where this step is hoped to refine their systems in various environments and on different terrain. All the best to the Lexus RX450h!

Press Release

[ Google’s Self-Driving Car clocks up 300,000 miles copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]