determine the road
layout, and adds a
LIDAR overlay to
determine what is in
the road’s vicinity. It
can discern a two
meter tall human
moving at 1 MPH, but
a similar object moving
at 10 MPH must be a
human on a bike. A
two meter wide by two
meter tall object
moving at 50 MPH
must be a car.
Likewise, telephone
poles, curbs, lines on
the street’s surface, and
other objects and markings
can be ‘seen.’
A recent encounter
that a Google car made
with a cyclist on a road
baffled the car for a
moment when the person
on the bike made a ‘track
stand’ — a cyclist’s
movement where the
person keeps their feet on
the pedals at a stop sign
but does not pedal.
Google Car’s
Capabilities
They’ve capped the speed of the
first vehicles at 25 MPH and are
programmed to obey the posted
speed limits if lower than 25 MPH.
However, some have actually been
programmed to drive faster in
demonstrations. There is a ‘kill switch’
inside the car should a passenger
sense unavoidable danger (unlike the
Schwarzenegger’s character ripped
the head off the taxi’s ‘driver’ and
took control of the vehicle). Besides
the sophisticated LIDAR, there are
radar sensors fore and aft, and
cameras to sense people, cars, and
other objects. A series of sensors
measures acceleration and rotation in
three axes, and odometry is provided
by a shaft encoder — similar to the
one below Sergey’s hand in Figure
10. It is the LIDAR sensor mounted on
the roof that provides the most useful
intel to the car’s computer.
Future Google self-driving cars will
not have the large protruding bump
on the roof, nor will other company’s
autonomous vehicles. Sensors will be
able to be shrunk to blend in with a
car’s structure and will be every bit as
capable. Mileage will increase beyond
the present 100 miles
between charges, and
the cute smiling face
on the front of the car
should morph into a
more serious design as
humans become
comfortable seeing
self-driving cars on our
roads and highways.
The Google Chauffeur
software will be greatly
improved, as will
customer confidence in
being chauffeured
about in a robot car.
You can rest assured
that Page, Brin, and
company will continue to
be the leaders in the field
of autonomous cars, just as
Elon Musk has done with
the Tesla pure electric
vehicle.
Final Thoughts
Advanced 3D imaging
and vehicle control
information for
autonomous vehicles can
be found in thousands of citations on
the Internet and Google. Check these
sites out and you will be amazed at
what is available for the experimenter.
The self-driving car is not in the same
category of the “flying” car. The
technology is here today, and people
will buy them.
Google is not the only company
out there striving hard to bring forth a
cost-effective self-driving car. So are
Uber, Nissan (shown in Figure 18),
Toyota, BMW, General Motors, Ford,
and even Hitachi (shown in Figure 19)
with their tiny Ropits car. All of them
are working hard to make self-driving
vehicles available to everyone.
I might be a bit nervous when I
take my first ride in a self-driving car,
but my nature is to try anything new. I
cannot wait. I think the rest of the
world will also desire this new type of
transportation, just as they did with
the horseless carriage. SV
SERVO 12.2015 65
Figure 17. Computer representation of Google Chauffeur used in a Google car.
Figure 18. Self-driving Nissan Leaf.
Figure 19. Hitachi Ropits self-driving car.
