Is Google’s Driverless Car The Future Of Transportation
We’ve all heard of Google’s driverless car and how it helps the search giant create detailed maps of the world’s road networks. But now the company is taking the technology a step further by using it to well, drive people. At the Code conference last Tuesday, the Mountain View company unveiled a working prototype of its driverless vehicle…
We’ve all heard of Google’s driverless car and how it helps the search giant create detailed maps of the world’s road networks. But now the company is taking the technology a step further by using it to well, drive people.
At the Code conference last Tuesday, the Mountain View company unveiled a working prototype of its driverless vehicle. The car looks a lot like a trimmed down version of the Fiat 500 and runs completely on electricity. The vehicle can accommodate two persons and is void of a steering wheel and a gas pedal.
What it has though is a center display console which shows passengers different information including the temperature outside and the duration of the trip. The display could also possibly be used to display other information and media for entertainment purposes.
The car uses sensors placed at the roof of the car in order to monitor its environment. Google said it will start testing the cars first in its campus as a mode of transportation for its employees. The company has also mentioned that the technology still has a lot of limitations and that they are currently working on improving it to help speed up its commercial release.
On a related note, Google’s announcement has caught the interest of Uber – the American transportation network company that provides on-demand driver services worldwide.
According to the company’s CEO Travis Kalanick, the company is planning to replace its network of drivers with self-driving cars in the future once the technology becomes mainstream.
He further added that such a technology should lower the cost of Uber’s service stating that the reason why their services are expensive is because customers are not just paying for the car but also the driver.
For now, most of the hurdles for releasing a fully autonomous car involves legal restrictions rather than technical. But with the kind of technology that Google showcased, it’s no longer that hard to imagine a world where you just need to take out your phone to get from point A to point B.
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