Google's Driverless cars

We all met Google as a search engine whenn still the internet was relatively young. Now it has many more projects running. Google+, GoogleMaps, Android, Gmail, are few of these. Although all these fall under the domain of Internet Technology, recently Google has shown an acute interest in Automotive Industry.

What Sebastian Thrun, Google's engineer and co-developer of Google Street View and director of Stanford Artificial Inteligence Laboratory intends to do, is to create a safer method of transportation to reduce the number of car accidents that result in injury or death.

And what he does for it? He develops an integrated system for cars to be able to navigate them automatically without human intervention. According to Google this results in safer driving, easier parking and more eficient use of fuel and space.

Using  a LIDAR, for 3D imaging, the computer in the trunk cross references the data with Google Street View to know the street layout, the location of other vehicles and pedestrians, trafic lights and speed limits etc. Pretty awesome.

Self-driving cars are admittedly a lofty, almost far-fetched prospect. Even the most optimistic people behind the Google team say it's at least eight years away from reaching consumers. But the promise it holds! With self driving cars on the road, researchers say road capacity can double since robots will drive at closer distances from one another.

Plus, robot cars can theoretically react faster than humans and with the right sensors, can see the road from a 360-degree perspective. Not to mention they never get drunk, sleepy or text while driving either.