Google's driverless cars

Google has made a name for itself in driverless cars, and this is a list of the 10 PCT or "World Patent" applications [now 15, 5 Aug. 2014] by them which mention "autonomous" driving (they do not use the term "driverless" in their summaries). Seven were published in 2013 alone.

These include Vehicle control based on perception uncertainty, and below are two drawings taken from the equivalent US patent application. The first shows the way the software determines what to do, the second shows what the vehicle might look like if equipped with the sensing device.

Google are not the only company interested in the technology. A rather crude listing of 150 PCT patent applications in the B60 class, which is "vehicles in general", which include autonomous or driverless in the summary is listed here.

I still find it incredible that we might relatively soon have self-driving cars. A very informative article by Robert Calem called Driverless cars on the rise from the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show discusses the issues involved with such cars.

I also enjoyed the New Yorker article by Burkhard Bilger, Auto Correct: Has the self-driving car at last arrived ?

Below is a short video showing the Google car in action.