Stanford University professor Sebastian Thrun, who led the development of the Google’s self-driving car, and Google engineer Chris Urmson revealed the secret workings of these autonomous vehicles in a keynote at the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems last month. The talk divulged how the system works, and Sebastian dn Chris showed footage of how it sees the world.
At the “heart of the system” is the Velodyne 64-beam laser range-finder that’s mounted onto the car’s roof. The device scans and records laser measurements to create a 3D model of the world around it that it then correlates to high-resolution maps. From this, it creates routes that avoid obstacles and obey traffic rules.
The vehicle is also equipped with radar, GPS, an inertial measurement unit, and other sensors that keep the vehicle on course and provide it with 360-degree situational awareness.
More interestingly, the car is programmed to be extremely courteous–it’ll yield to any pedestrian crossing the street and it strictly adheres to road rules. At the same time, it can also be aggressive toward other vehicles that aren’t obeying the right-of-way rules by easing into the intersection to assert that it will be turning first.
Be sure to check out IEEE Spectrum for the full story, along with plenty of photos and videos.
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