Data gathered from Google’s self-driving Prius and Lexus cars shows that they are safer and smoother when they are driven automatically than driven by professional human drivers.
Chris Urmson, Director of Google’s self-driving cars project presented results from two studies of data from the hundreds of thousands of miles Google’s vehicles have logged on public roads in California and Nevada at a robotics conference in Santa Clara, California.
One of those analyses showed that when a human was behind the wheel, Google’s cars accelerated and braked significantly more sharply than they did when piloting themselves. Another showed that the cars’ software was much better at maintaining a safe distance from the vehicle ahead than the human drivers were.
The U.S. state of Nevada passed a law on June 29, 2011 permitting the operation of autonomous cars in Nevada. Google had been lobbying for robotic car laws.
Google is testing its cars on public roads since 2010 , always with a human in the driver’s seat who can take over if necessary.
Google’s robotic test cars have about $150,000 in equipment including a $70,000 LIDAR (laser radar) system. The range finder mounted on the top is a Velodyne 64-beam laser.
