MOTORHUB MAGAZINE
The age of Driver-less Cars
SELF
THE
GOOGLE
DRIVING
T
car
he Google Self-Driving Car is a
project by Google that involves
developing technology for autonomous cars, mainly electric cars. The
software powering Google’s cars is called
Google Chauffeur. Lettering on the side
of each car identifies it as a “self-driving
car”. The project is currently being led by
Google engineer Sebastian Thrun, former
director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and co-inventor of
Google Street View.
On May 28, 2014, Google presented a new
prototype of their driverless car that had
neither a steering wheel nor pedals. On
December 22, 2014, Google unveiled a
fully functioning prototype of their driverless car and planned to test it on San
Francisco Bay Area roads beginning in
2015.
Technology
Google’s robotic cars have about $150,000
in equipment including a $70,000 LIDAR
system. The range finder mounted on the
top is a Velodyne 64-beam laser. This laser
allows the vehicle to generate a detailed
3D map of its environment. The car then
takes these generated maps and combines
them with high-resolution maps of the
world, producing different types of data
models that allow it to drive itself.
As of June 2014, the system works with a
very high definition inch-precision map
of the area the vehicle is expected to use,
including how high the traffic lights are;
in addition to on-board systems, some
computation is performed on remote
computer farms.
Road testing
The project