Driverless Car

My second article was about a car in Germany which had been named the “Spirit of Berlin”. Although it is quite an old article written in december of 2007. The lack of automated cars today would still suggest that it is at the forefront of technology. Today cars exist with sensors and cameras for parking, however this car is in a league of its own.

     The “Spirit of Berlin” uses a combination of video cameras, laser sensors and a GPS navigation system in order to sense obsticles and read road signs. The car surpasses the abilitys of a human driver in that it is capable of constant three hundred and sixty degree observation, picking up one million points per second which are then   processed by four computers in order to decide the cars actions. So far the car has had no accidents.

The Spirit of Berlin

     However unlike human drivers the computers are not capable of using reason. An example in the article is of a pedestrian at the side of the road. A human driver would observe the pedestrian and try to anticipate their actions. However the computerised car would perceive the pedestrian as a stationary object, which could potentially cause an accident. Although this could be considered as a major flaw in the cars design, the “Spirit of Berlin” is still a work in progress and scientists are still working on future innovations such as reading traffic lights.

     I thought this was an extremely interesting article as a flying car is a common stereotype associated with the future, however this article made me consider a future of automated cars instead. A future in which human drivers would be no longer be necessacery and road traffic accidents may even become extinct.

If you are interested in reading this article it can be found in the link below.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2007/1205-driverless_car.htm