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Watch Google’s Self-Driving Car Take A Blind Man To Get Drive Thru Tacos

Date: Mar 30, 2012 | Author: Josh Tyler | Category: Sci-Fi In Real Life

Google has been working on making the sci-fi dream of a self-driving car a reality for awhile now, and they’re getting pretty close to pulling it off. The technology has progressed to the point that Google now has a car which can make its way through a drive thru, and even find a parking space, without any direction at all.

At least that’s the way it seems from this video, in which Google’s self-driving car takes a blind man to Taco Bell. Watch and be amazed…

I’m going come right out and admit that I really don’t understand how this could possibly work. How would the car know it was at a drive thru, and thus know to stop at the speaker and then subsequently at the window? How could a car pick out a parking space? How does it figure out any of this? The answer may be that it doesn’t.

In the notes included with the video, Google admits that what you just watched was a “carefully programmed route”. In other words they may have pre-programmed a lot of that in. Steve the blind “driver” didn’t just say “take me to Taco Bell” and end up there. Maybe you noticed there weren’t any other cars on the road? No line at the drive thru either. Collision avoidance and staying between the lines may be possible with a self-driving car, but I suspect that despite the evidence presented in this particular video, tacos are still beyond your self-driving car’s reach.

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Comments

  • Lifetime SF Fan

    Marvelous technology, even with the pre-programmed aspect, but I heard their object is to replace all vehicles with self-drive cars before 2050 (which would be collectively owned on a time-share basis as they would be too expensive for any but the rich to actually buy), which effectively means that independent human action and initiative are reduced/curtailed — another form of public control and enforced dependency on the “big guys.” This may be an Orwellian panic reaction on the part of early observers, but didn’t they state something to that effect a couple of years ago? And given the state of Western society, it is by no means an unreasonable speculation.

  • Richard Des

    Uh sure they are controlling us somehow. How about it would prevents 10′s of thousands of people dying every year in the US alone. I would think it’s very possible. Computers can recognize colour, depths and distances. Loading from the cities info they could have a digital map of the city to correlate with how things are on the ground, reading the traffic lines and stops. Also, properly programmed a drive through could just have a wifi beacon attached to its box, thus it can guide cars smoothly through a pre designated route taking into account the cars particular profile. I don’t see how it would get ridiculously expensive, cameras and computers are quite cheap. 

    Who honestly identifies with who they are by their commute to work? I hate it and I would much prefer to nap, hell I would love to let my car drive me on my long car trips that I take to see my parents or my friends as it is still much cheaper than flying and I can sleep on the way there, I don’t have to worry about causing an accident because of drowsiness. 

    Enough of that rant. This is awesome. 

  • http://2000ah.blogspot.com/ Edward

    I cannot wait for this technology to be perfected.