Self-driving cars could save thousands of lives per year.
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk says self-driving cars might be on the roads faster than most people think. Musk told reporters in Tokyo that Tesla is developing the technology for “full autopilot” consumer cars in just five years.
A pre-made map only lets Google’s self-driving car know about the presence of certain stationary objects, like traffic lights.
Google’s self-driving car has made impressive progress but there are still some major limitations for automated driving. It can’t drive itself in 99 percent of the country. The car knows nearly nothing about parking, and can’t be taken out in snow or heavy rain, and it would drive straight over a gaping pothole.
Project Loon aims to bring internet access to the two-thirds of the world.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, last month, thumbed his nose at Google for its various “moonshot” projects, currently housed at Google’s semi-secret X Labs. When Nadella was asked if Microsoft could learn a thing or two from X Labs, he said that there’s always something to learn from “from people who market themselves well.”
FBI is more optimistic about the benefits of driverless cars when it comes to surveillance efforts.
Self-driving cars are a “potential lethal weapon,” but could make surveillance “more effective and easier,” according to FBI claims in an internal report surfaced by the Guardian.
Within about six years, Google’s self-driving car technology may appear in Toyotas, Fords, and other widely available vehicles. It all depends on how the latest rounds of talks between Google and the automakers play out.
Volvo Car Group’s “Drive Me” project — featuring 100 self-driving Volvos on public roads in everyday driving conditions — is moving forward rapidly, with the first test cars now driving around the Swedish city of Gothenburg.
For Regus, which operates close to 2,000 business centers globally, the office of the future it isn’t one where workers stand, walk, or even squat. Regus envisions a world in which people are sitting–in a self-driving office, that is.
Google to offer free rides in self-driving cars for shoppers.
Self-driving cars have a lot to do with Google’s core business selling ads. Google was just awarded a patent for an ad-powered taxi service. The patent would allow advertisers to offer potential customers a free ride to their place of business.
Self-driving cars and driver controlled cars are expected to hit highways around the world before 2025 and self-driving “only” cars (only the car drives) are anticipated around 2030, according to an emerging technologies study on Autonomous Cars from IHS Automotive.
100 lucky customers will be given the opportunity to ride around in a car that does their driving for them.
Sweden has just announced that they will play host to self-driving cars in the next couple of years. England, Japan, Singapore and the U.S. have already announced that they will host fleets of self-driving automobiles, but Sweden’s 100-car strong automotive army will be the first manufactured by Volvo. (Video)
Amazon and UPS are looking into package delivery via automated flying drones. But, according to the New York Times, Google’s recent interest in robotics lays out an interesting hypothetical situation: imagine a self-driving car pulling up in your driveway, and a robot getting out to deliver your package instead of a living, breathing UPS human bedecked in brown.
Human beings make terrible drivers. They talk on the phone and run red lights, signal to the left and turn to the right. They drink too much beer and plow into trees or veer into traffic as they swat at their kids. They have blind spots, leg cramps, seizures, and heart attacks. They rubberneck, hotdog, and take pity on turtles, cause fender benders, pileups, and head-on collisions. They nod off at the wheel, wrestle with maps, fiddle with knobs, have marital spats, take the curve too late, take the curve too hard, spill coffee in their laps, and flip over their cars. Of the ten million accidents that Americans are in every year, nine and a half million are their own damn fault.