Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Are Self-Driving Cars Coming Sooner Than We Think?



Yes.  Yes.  Yes.  According to Daily Finance: “This is no pipe dream. Google's (GOOG) well-publicized experiments with self-driving cars have shown the world that this is real technology, not a science-fiction dream. In fact, it's just one more step on a journey that has been under way for several years -- a journey toward taking the "driving" out of car ownership.”  Google has been hard at work at this process, you can check out their progress here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9Fxp3HK6DI  The vehicle drives itself, maintaining speed and angles throughout. 

Other manufacturers like Mercedes are working on a system that will allow drivers to leave the car to drive itself at speeds of up to 30 mph (gotta start somewhere!).  The process is somewhat similar to radar cruise control, in which the autonomous driving system uses a series of cameras and sensors to control the speed of the car and the distance to the front of the other vehicle.  Mercedes-Benz engineer Dr Stefan Schweher told the website the technology "allows the driver to concentrate on other things" while they navigated morning or evening traffic.

Wow, sounds pretty cool! What do you think?  Would you want your car to drive for you?  Leave us feedback!

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