Company is focusing on city driving
We've haven't heard much about Google's autonomous driving system lately but that changes today as the company has revealed some new details about their progress.
In a blog post, Google's Director of the Self-Driving Car Project said their prototypes have logged "thousands of miles" of additional testing around their headquarters in Mountain View, California. Chris Urmson went on to say the company has shifted their focus to "mastering city street driving" as "a mile of city driving is much more complex than a mile of freeway driving, with hundreds of different objects moving according to different rules of the road in a small area."
As a result, Google has improved the system so it can detect "hundreds of distinct objects simultaneously" including pedestrians, cars and buses as well as a stop sign being held by a crossing guard and even a cyclist making gestures that indicate a possible turn. Urmson goes on to say street driving is "fairly predictable" for a computer and the company has built models that can expect predictable behaviors - such as cars stopping at red lights - as well as unusual behaviors such as cars running red lights.
While Urmson says there are still "lots of problems to solve," the company is growing more optimistic that they can achieve their goal of creating a car that doesn't require human intervention.
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