Self Driving Cars  

Google's efforts to try and have California's regulations for testing of autonomous cars changed surfaced recently, with the search giant asking legislators to grant it the right not to report minor incidents occurring during the tests.

While driverless cars are largely expected to change transportation in a positive way, promising to eliminate human error – arguably the most common contributing factor behind most motor vehicle crashes – they could encounter a mixed perception among consumers once they hit the market. Ever since the idea of autonomous driving started gaining widespread media attention, mostly thanks to Google and its self-driving car prototype unveiled a couple of years ago, people have been voicing their concerns over possible invasion of car owners' privacy, along with potential safety issues, with a large portion of the public somewhat understandably hesitant about giving up control and handing it over to the car's computer.

Now, there is yet another reason for concern, with Google saying that it would rather not reveal driverless cars' testing data, indicating that there might be some potentially compromising information that the company would like to keep a secret.

Information regarding Google's efforts to try and have California's regulations for testing of autonomous cars changed surfaced recently, with the search giant asking legislators to grant it the right not to report minor incidents occurring during the tests, unless the car was operated in a fully-autonomous mode at the moment.

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Ron Medford, director of safety for Google's self-driving program, was quoted as saying that the California's DMV requirement for broad reporting will be a burden on manufacturers, and on the DMV, itself, and that the rules regulating the testing of self-driving cars “should be amended to limit required reporting to accidents involving vehicles operated in autonomous mode.”

Furthermore, Google asked regulators to withdraw the requirement for all instances of “disengagement” to be reported with the DMV. The term “disengagement” refers to a situation where the car's computer hands back control to the human driver, which doesn't necessarily mean that there is something wrong with the autonomous driving system. For example, these situations can occur when the car runs across an unmapped area, or a traffic sign or signal that was installed only recently and is not featured on the vehicle's map.

On the other hand, though, a disengagement can also indicate that the car is not capable of negotiating certain obstacles on the road, perform a specific driving maneuver, or handle a complicated traffic situation, which could pose a potential risk to public safety. That's why the DMV is adamant to receive disengagement reports, a requirement that, besides Google, has also been opposed by the likes of Mercedes Benz, GM, and Volkswagen.

Although no manufacturer would gladly share information that could harm its reputation, every car maker that is developing autonomous driving technology will have to report every single incident with the DMV if it wants to continue testing its driverless cars on California's public roads in the future.

The DMV expects to get the first disengagement reports from Google in January 2016, and intends to use them in the process of creating driver tests for driverless vehicles, as well as for creating a proper regulatory framework for when these vehicles become commercially available.

By Jordan Perch

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Author Bio - Jordan Perch is an automotive fanatic and “safe driving” specialist. He is a writer for DMV.com, which is a collaborative community designed to help ease the stress and annoyance of “dealing with the DMV”

 Self Driving Cars  

Google's self driving cars have now logged nearly 700,000 autonomous miles, and with every passing mile their research team is growing more optimistic that the goal of a vehicle that operates fully without human intervention is possible.

Jaywalking pedestrians. Cars lurching out of hidden driveways. Double-parked delivery trucks blocking your lane and your view. All of these occurrences and more are faced by human drivers everyday, and now they are the challenges of teams around the world developing self driving cars.

"We’ve shifted the focus of the Google self-driving car project onto mastering city street driving."

Google has posted an update on their blog showing some of the progress their team has been making over the last year with its self-driving car initiative. The driverless cars have been tackling the challenge of navigating city streets of Google’s home town, Mountain View, California.

Freeway driving has already been largely tackled by the self driving car team, so now they are ready for the next challenge.

Google's vehicles have now logged nearly 700,000 autonomous miles, and with every passing mile they are growing more optimistic that the goal of a vehicle that operates fully without human intervention is possible.

  "We’ve shifted the focus of the Google self-driving car project onto mastering city street driving," claims the post.

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Since our last update, we’ve logged thousands of miles on the streets of our hometown of Mountain View, Calif. 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. We’ve improved our software so it can detect hundreds of distinct objects simultaneously—pedestrians, buses, a stop sign held up by a crossing guard, or a cyclist making gestures that indicate a possible turn. A self-driving vehicle can pay attention to all of these things in a way that a human physically can’t—and it never gets tired or distracted.

The video above details how Google's vehicles navigate some urban driving scenarios in and around Mountain View.

According to Google, what looks chaotic and random on a city street to the human eye is actually fairly predictable to a computer. "As we’ve encountered thousands of different situations, we’ve built software models of what to expect, from the likely (a car stopping at a red light) to the unlikely (blowing through it)," they write.

There are still a multitude of problems to figure out before Google can really start making and selling self driving cars, "But thousands of situations on city streets that would have stumped us two years ago can now be navigated autonomously."


SOURCE  Official Google Blog

By 33rd Square

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