Google Has Developed Cars That Drive Themselves & Glasses W/Computers In Lenses>>>

[KittyWampus]

I just read about the Google Glasses w/computers and my first thought was the large number of people who are already dying in car accidents will jump to an even higher number…. then I remembered a recent NY Times article about an already made driverless car which allows the "driver" to sleep. I just searched for the article and found that Google has invented this too.

SO> Google gives consumers glasses that take our attention away from what's around us (there is no such thing as effective multi-tasking) and a car that lets us operate a vehicle without paying attention.

And to reiterate, the human brain does not multi-task effectively.

A friend just buried their son who was almost certainly texting while driving (friends received text just before time of crash). The engine was in the front seat and the charred body was in the trunk. My stepmother's family were part of the first responder team to witness that wreck and had to hose down the blackened corpse which could not be identified positively by the police until days later when the bits had been analyzed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/science/10google.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0


Robot drivers react faster than humans, have 360-degree perception and do not get distracted, sleepy or intoxicated, the engineers argue. They speak in terms of lives saved and injuries avoided — more than 37,000 people died in car accidents in the United States in 2008. The engineers say the technology could double the capacity of roads by allowing cars to drive more safely while closer together. Because the robot cars would eventually be less likely to crash, they could be built lighter, reducing fuel consumption. But of course, to be truly safer, the cars must be far more reliable than, say, today’s personal computers, which crash on occasion and are frequently infected.

The Google research program using artificial intelligence to revolutionize the automobile is proof that the company’s ambitions reach beyond the search engine business. The program is also a departure from the mainstream of innovation in Silicon Valley, which has veered toward social networks and Hollywood-style digital media.

During a half-hour drive beginning on Google’s campus 35 miles south of San Francisco last Wednesday, a Prius equipped with a variety of sensors and following a route programmed into the GPS navigation system nimbly accelerated in the entrance lane and merged into fast-moving traffic on Highway 101, the freeway through Silicon Valley.It drove at the speed limit, which it knew because the limit for every road is included in its database, and left the freeway several exits later. The device atop the car produced a detailed map of the environment.

The car then drove in city traffic through Mountain View, stopping for lights and stop signs, as well as making announcements like “approaching a crosswalk” (to warn the human at the wheel) or “turn ahead” in a pleasant female voice. This same pleasant voice would, engineers said, alert the driver if a master control system detected anything amiss with the various sensors.

The car can be programmed for different driving personalities — from cautious, in which it is more likely to yield to another car, to aggressive, where it is more likely to go first.

[JaneyVee]

1. The Singularity is near!

[CosmicDustBunny]

2. Can't I just drive my car by myself with the glasses I normally wear?

The Borg thing is getting rather disturbing.