Courtesy of Benzinga.
Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research has been keeping a close eye on Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL)’s driverless car project, which is spearheaded by Alphabet’s Google unit.
Google began working on a self-driving car in 2009, with the objective of making transportation safer, easier and more enjoyable. The company noted that over 1.2 million lives are lost to traffic accidents across the world every year, and this figure could be lowered through self-driving cars.
Chowdhry noted that in addition to improving roadway safety, self-driving cars can also reduce traffic and also offer transportation alternatives to the blind, elderly and others living with a condition that would make driving impossible.
Google expanded its efforts in 2011 and modified existing vehicles, including the Lexus RX450h, for highway driving. A prototype was then announced in 2014 and is now being tested on public roads across Nevada, Florida, California and Michigan.
Today, Google’s self-driving car uses radar, laser and camera sensors for a 360-degree field of view that extends the length of two football fields. The car also makes use of “semantic understanding” to better understand its environment and how to handle potential dangerous situations.
In fact, Google can use data from a dangerous situation involving just one of its cars to “train” its entire fleet of how to handle similar situations.
So far, Google’s self-driving cars have logged 1.8 million miles, which is the equivalent of 108 years on the road.
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