Googleês self-driving cars tackle city streets
City streets are generally harder to drive on than highways, and Google wants to make sure its autonomous vehicles are up to the task. The tech giant has shifted the focus of its autonomous vehicle program to city streets.
Weêve improved our software so it can detect hundreds of distinct objects simultaneously pedestrians, buses, a stop sign held up by a crossing guard, or a cyclist making gestures that indicate a possible turn, the company wrote in a blog post. A self-driving vehicle can pay attention to all of these things in a way that a human physically canêt and it never gets tired or distracted.
David Alexander, a senior analyst with Navigant Research who studies autonomous vehicles, told the Associated Press that self-driving cars wonêt be commercially available until 2025. IHS Automotive says there will be 54 million autonomous vehicles globally by 2035, and that nearly all vehicles will be autonomous sometime after 2050, reports the Detroit News.
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