"This is some of the best driving I've ever done," Steve Mahan said the other day. Mahan was behind the wheel of a Toyota Prius tooling the small California town of Morgan Hill in late January, a routine trip to pick up the dry cleaning and drop by the Taco Bell drive-in for a snack.
He also happens to be 95 percent blind.
Mahan, head of the Santa Clara Valley Blind Center, “drove” along a specially programmed route thanks to Google’s autonomous driving technology. Look, ma! No hands. And no feet!” Mahan jokes at one point in a video of the event, posted online Wednesday by Google. “I love it,” he added.
Google announced the self-driving car project in 2010. It relies upon laser range finders, radar sensors, and video cameras to navigate the road ahead, in order to make driving safer, more enjoyable and more efficient -- and clearly more accessible. The search engine giant was awarded a patent on the system in December. In a Wednesday afternoon post (March 28, 2012) on Google+, the company noted that it has hundreds of thousands of miles of testing under the belt, letting the company feel confident enough in the system to put Mahan behind the wheel.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/28/amazing-google-self-driving-cars-allow-blind-to-drive/#ixzz1qYCZayNg
Yikes! This article made me laugh at some of the possibilities - ("I didn't run that red light, hic, occifer, my car did, hic".) Or my daughter with a disability "driving"? Or my elderly mom who should not drive around the corner "driving" on the highway?! I like the idea of sitting in the backseat of my car, like Miss DAisy and saying "Home Google". Thanks Michele. Google will someday rule the world.
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