Automatic Parking By Google
After driverless car trials earlier this year, Google is now investigating tracking and managing the computer-controlled vehicles. Work goes on to fine-tune the process by which the cars monitor their surroundings and steer to avoid obstacles and reach their destinations. Google has already been granted a patent for a ‘landing strip‘, which is a parking spot with a particular set of markings to assist the vehicle in parking itself. This means the car could park without having to rely on GPS. In a semi-automatic driverless car scenario, a car could be parked on the specially-demarcated strip and then send a QR code to a central location or url, thereby reporting its position in that particular spot, from where it could await further instructions.
Info could also be sent to the vehicle – flight delays, pollen count information, or even special offers. Such ‘smart’ landing strips might well be the first step along the route to automated driving, only allowing Google to take over once the vehicle ‘hits the spot’. The next step will be cruise control with steering, whereby a human will sit at the ready to grab the wheel if the car makes a mistake. Unless of course the human does so remotely…Need For Speed style. A new symbiotic relationship could be struck if the car could monitor the human for mistakes, applying the brakes when the car approached another object at a speed which might not allow it stop in sufficient time.
Via techcrunch
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