via WSJ

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece that covers the various efforts underway in the world of autonomous vehicles (aka driverless cars i lay people speak) and how manufacturers are working with legislators to introduce their products to the tech-hungry driving public at least in a few states across the  country.. here is a video that accompanies that article.

What caught me by surprise is the sheer volume of activity and how certain people are that they will see autonomous vehicles on the roads in just a few short years.. As much as I would like to believe, full automation (Level 4) is still a decade away and we still have a lot of hurdles on the technology, policy and infrastructure side.  As one of the interviewed researchers points out, there are many concerns that dog this challenge incl. the high cost of laser vision, the risk that radar and camera sensors won’t see properly in bad weather, and complex legal issues raised by giving control to a robot. Let’s hope we overcome these hurdles soon because we, as a society, are paying a heavy price in terms of human lives and hard earned treasure as we continue to drive with manual control (~33K people killed on American roads during 2012).

Click here to read the entire article.

via WSJ Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal has an interesting article that explores the roadblock posed by sky-high prices of the LiDAR units, which offer the vehicles’ “seeing” and “navigating” capabilities , in the widespread adoption automated vehicles.  That pesky little roof mounted LiDAR unit  atop the Google’s prototype vehicle apparently cost between $75,000 and $85,000, which explains why it will be a problem for mass market. Click here to read the entire article.  What caught me is this simple infographic that accompanied the article. It nicely explains how the LiDAR works.

Image: Eyes of a Car via Wall Street Journal.

(Source: Google)

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdgQpa1pUUE&hd=1′]

Google hits a home-run with this real-life demonstration of  its autonomous vehicle by putting a vision-impaired person behind the driving wheel in the regular streets.  Steve Mahan, the man behind the wheel, is legally blind (95% gone) and he goes about what most of us drivers do in a normal day – runs errands, stops by a drive-through window for a burrito, picks up his dry cleaning, etc – all this without touching the steering wheel.   For people like him this self-driving car should feel like a god-sent and the level of autonomy it offers should be priceless.