Google makes an autonomous nascar stock car. DARPA eat your heart out.

[LEDSanders]

Ever since mankind could go fast, we have longed to go faster. And ever since we’ve done work, we have longed to have someone else, or something else, do that work for us. You might already be familiar with google's [URL="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/what-were-driving-at.html"]self-driving car project[/URL]. They’ve spent years working on a tough engineering problem—how to create a hardware and software system capable of gathering and interpreting massive amounts of real-time data and acting on that knowledge swiftly and surely enough to navigate innumerable varieties of crowded thoroughfares without ever once (among other human frailties) exploding in a fit of road rage at the guy who just cut hard left across your lane without even bothering to flash his blinker.

Well, Google's autonomous cars have now been test-driven (or rather, test-ridden) for more than 200,000 miles without a single machine-caused mishap. And today we're moving the project one great leap forward with Google Racing, a groundbreaking partnership with NASCAR to help self-driving vehicles compete in the world of stock car racing. We think the most important thing computers can do in the next decade is to drive cars—and that the most important thing Google Racing can do in the next decade is drive them, if possible, more quickly than anyone else. Or anything else.
More info here: Google Racing

Hey guy April fools!

 

[lasersbee]

I saw a few of the AutoPilot driving events in the past...
I love this stuff... Thanks for sharing..


Jerry

 

[InfinitusEquitas]

Personally I'm a bit conflicted by these developments. On the one hand I would love to be able to sit back and read a book in my car while stuck in traffic, instead of watching the break lights in front of me and going twenty feet at a time.

On the other hand for 90% of my driving, I feel I would be loosing time. For example, given traffic conditions, google says it takes 22 minutes to get from my home to my office. This morning with more traffic I made it in 15... some speeding was involved

 

[jander6442]

I wish... I would love to drive the #48 car into the wall hard every race

 

[Ears and Eggs]

I wish... I would love to drive the #48 car into the wall hard every race

You see Martinsville last weekend?

 

[jander6442]

^ yes giggled very hard there.

 

[charleytown55il]

That's what the 24 and 48 get for staying out on OLD tires although I can't blame them for trying anyways.

 

[jander6442]

That's what the 24 and 48 get for staying out on OLD tires although I can't blame them for trying anyways.

To true, to true... spun out on a restart.:eg: