Comments on: How Robot Cars Could Be More Sustainable Cars

By: Google Eyes Mobile as the Key to 2011: Tech News and Analysis «

Google Eyes Mobile as the Key to 2011: Tech News and Analysis « — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 22:06:31 +0000

[...] is driven by search and has dreams of driverless cars, fiber to the home networks and other innovations. But the company believes this year’s [...]

By: Google’s GFleet To Provide Testing Ground for Electric Cars: Cleantech News «

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 03:00:59 +0000

[...] video demo here). And last month The New York Times reported that Google has been quietly building self-driving robotic car technology, based on the work of Google engineer and Stanford Professor Sebastian Thrun, who co-invented [...]

By: Jeff R

Jeff R — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 02:40:40 +0000

Most reports on this seem to miss that one of the biggest savings will be in fewer traffic jams. We’ve all experienced traffic jams where there is no accident or other obstacle, ones that just seem to strangely appear and then disappear again. These common types of jams are created by humans driving too close to each other, so that cars can’t easily change lanes when necessary, and have to slow down to do so, which in turn causes more slowing, making it yet harder to change lanes, in a vicious circle until everyone is stopped dead. If everyone and/or robots just spaced their cars adequately, everything would flow much better, thereby saving quite a bit of fuel as well as avoiding the need to build more lanes.

In other words, we don’t actually need robotic cars to solve the problem, we could just invest in driver education. But that’s too easy– bring on the robotic cars!

(More interesting info on traffic at trafficwaves.org.)

By: Roberto Mena

Roberto Mena — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 16:43:27 +0000

I like this car. This is the car of my dreams/

By: Luis Garcia

Luis Garcia — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 09:04:08 +0000

Combine this with constantly updated traffic reports that your car receives, and I can see less traffic jams and faster commutes.

On the other hand, I enjoy driving (except in heavy traffic), and I don’t want to totally relinquish that control to a computer. I’ll stay off the wheel in the city, but I want the wheel back on the open road.

By: Katie Fehrenbacher

Katie Fehrenbacher — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 14:26:57 +0000

@forex, there’s already a bunch of software in your car – sometimes things go wrong with it. Hazard of the digital age.

@Scoble, go gravity!

By: dissertations

dissertations — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 12:12:14 +0000

Thanks Google for making our science fiction true! Can’t wait to see more such cars on the streets!

By: DD36

DD36 — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 06:21:03 +0000

Robot cars will be a godsend for the elderly.

And, hopefully they’ll be ready for primetime by the time I’m elderly ;)

By: forex

forex — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 02:29:57 +0000

there is always a risk with software. things can go wrong.

By: Robert Scoble

Robert Scoble — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 01:41:38 +0000

That’s exactly what Mike Montemerlo, one of the members of the Google Car Team, told me back in 2007: http://www.podtech.net/scobleshow/technology/1613/building-robotic-cars-at-stanford-university — he told me that if you knew the terrain you could save fuel by using gravity smartly.