Saw this sucker the other day.

Dude in driver seat hands off the wheel - rest of the guys all had laptops open. Thing on the top was spinning.

pretty nifty.

 

While playing scoutmaster for our troop this summer I had a chance to talk with another troop's scoutmaster. He was a computer something or other working with an outfit in Colorado that is working on a self driving car (not Google as far as I know.)

His claim is that within ten years it will be common to see those things on the road with drivers (monitors?) sitting behind the wheel with nothing to do but read the paper as they ride to where ever. Technology is out to take all the fun out of life possible.

Next thing you know someone will figure a way to make a self driving motorcycle and really mess up the world.

 

I just hope it doesn't follow Google's maps. No one will ever get anywhere

 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA no kidding! But this is pretty neat. they have had the ability to do this for a few years now but they would have to predrive the route and just replay the signals to the car. the only problem with that was it didnt account for traffic so they started using tons of cameras and crap to sense traffic and speed limit signs. but this just goes to show you google has their hand in just about everything

 

I've always favored Google Maps for looking up places / directions.

 

They always get me lost, and make no sense. But I do live in the Appalachian mountains. Some of the roads I like to go riding on are not even in the 911 data base yet.

 

how does it know which lane it is in. what if a kid jumps in front of the car. Does it slow down when raining? What if a stop light is not working. And what if the road is not on the GPS. If I took that thing to my univ I think I would kill 10 pedestrians every day unless I intervened. I feel like there are too many X variables for this to be produced on a large scale.

 

thats what the driver sitting in the seat is for lol. im sure as time goes on they will get better and better with the AI portion of the car and the lazy driver will only have to do the minimum.

as for google maps i never have any luck.. they tend to switch up north and south and east and west on me when i look up directions and make it look like the mirror image of what the directions really are. that or they take me the really wrong way. like to where two roads are supposed to cross when it turns out they dont at all

 

Google's Self-Driving Car Program - YouTube
a quick google search turned up this