Google updates its autonomous driving system

We'd heard about the project from Google about their autonomous driving system and eversince this project was given the nod to go ahead, there has been a considerable amount of interest that Google has managed to generate. A car that can drive itself, what else could one want!

One of their cars met with a crash not far away from the Google Headquarters in California, but the company said that the car was manually driven at the time of the accident. We've not heard much about the developments after that but now there is a video which shows the progress Google is making.

Google's Director of the Self-Driving Car Project, Chris Urmson, said in a blog post that the prototypes have logged in a lot of miles around their headquarters in California. Google has improved the system so it can detect hundreds of distinct objects simultaneously. These objects include pedestrians, cars, cyclists, stranded vehicles, buses and the like.

There is a long way to go still and lots of issues to be rectified but the ultimate goal is to achieve is a car that doesn't at all require human intervention.

The project team has equipped a test group of at least ten cars, consisting of six Toyota Prius, an Audi TT, and three Lexus RX450h, each accompanied in the driver's seat by one driver one of Google's engineers in the passenger seat.