The driverless car from Google can now move around the city

The driverless car from Google can now move around the city

For about a year, the 24 Lexus RX450h equipped with Google sensors have been circulating the streets of Mountain View

  Google is moving forward on its project to create a car that drives itself, and has just revealed that during the last year several prototypes have circulated in urban areas, something that, according to the company, is much more difficult than doing it by motorway. "One mile of driving per city is much more complex than one mile of highway driving, with hundreds of different objects moving according to different rules and in a small area," the director of the Google blog said in an entry in the official Google blog. Car project without a driver, Chris Urmson.

  Since about a year ago, the 24 Lexus RX450h equipped with Google sensors have been circulating the streets of Mountain View (California, USA), where the technological giant has its headquarters. "We have improved our software so that it can detect hundreds of different objects simultaneously - pedestrians, buses, a 'Stop' signal sustained by a traffic agent, or a cyclist who indicates with the arm an upcoming turn-", indicated Urmson. He stressed that, unlike the human being, the vehicle without a driver "can pay attention to all these things without ever getting tired or distracted."

The car that drives itself from Google is a project started in 2009 with an eye on the long term, although since then its two dozens of Lexus have already circulated - and, therefore, recorded on 3D maps - up to 700,000 miles (1,126 .000 km), hitherto mainly on motorways and roads. In all the kilometers that these vehicles have traveled to date there has always been a human driver sitting at the wheel, ready to take the reins of the car if there were any mishap. According to Google, its cars without driver have not registered any accidents while the vehicle has been driven automatically.

Models

"What seems chaotic and arbitrary in a city street for the human eye is quite predictable for a computer, we have developed software models based on thousands of different situations that go from the usual (a car that stops in front of a traffic light in red) at least usual (a car that does not respect a red light), "explained Urmson. The logic of the operation of these "smart" vehicles is based on a system of probabilities: when, for example, the car arrives at an intersection with several indications of 'Stop', the device recognizes the situation - previously recorded by Google engineers - and calculate how many different possibilities there are, to prepare an answer for each of them.

In this case, the car would contemplate several possibilities: that the rest of vehicles stop and give way, stop and immediately continue the march, or even stop. In spite of everything, the director of the project recognized that there are still many problems to be solved and that, among other things, they should still circulate the vehicles on many streets of Mountain View before starting to do it by other urban centers. In addition, to get ahead, the Google project must also find a fit in the current road code, which in no case contemplates the possibility of vehicles circulating without a driver.