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Cars That Drive Themselves
Cars That Drive Themselves
Auto Shipping Hub features an article overview of driverless cars, their history and future.
Ocala,
FL,
United States of America
(sardnews.org)
13/02/2012
Auto Shipping Hub is a car shipping broker website that offers comprehensive customer service and online shipping quotes. The company also features a number of informational articles both on the topic of car shipping, such as scam avoidance and cost control, and also general car related topics. Recently, the site has featured an overview of efforts to develop a commercially viable robotic passenger vehicle.
Self-driving cars have been a holy grail of technology and science fiction for many decades. Like fusion power, it's been one of the features constantly promised to be just around the next technological corner. As far back as the 1930s, illustrators have been drawing uniformed and gloved robot chauffeurs dropping off their genteel owners at the opera house. The image of the anthropomorphic robo-butler persisted as recently as the 80s and 90s; however, as the average consumer became accustomed to robots that get about their work while looking nothing like people, self-driving car designs emerged that lacked identifiable human characteristics, in favor of simple cameras and sensors.
The latter is certainly close to what scientists and engineers have been working on to make the dream of autonomous vehicles a reality. Both universities and defense research facilities have been on the game for many years, testing out various designs and computational approaches. The earliest ideas, from the days before cheap and reliable computing power had become viable, focused on having vehicles move on pre-determined tracks that would either be visible on the road, or emit electromagnetic waves to guide the car.
Unfortunately, such vehicles had crippling drawbacks, since they would only be able to move on a path that has been prepared for them. Adapting infrastructure for them would be costly, and they would still be unable to respond to unexpected occurrences.
Having mobile devices that can capture their environment through cameras or sensors, process it and adapt to it on the fly is a much more promising approach, but requires a good deal of computer power. Programmers have been making steady strides in this direction, however; in 2005, a driverless car was able to complete a grueling 150-mile course in the desert, overcoming heat, uneven geography and off-road conditions to win a million-dollar prize contributed by the Defense Department agency Darpa.
Thus, we have a vehicle that can overcome inanimate challenges; however, driving in traffic is an entirely different challenge. Programmers were thinking about how to approach design and testing of autonomous vehicles for city driving, when Google came out with a surprise announcement: they have built such a vehicle, and tested it over many thousands of miles on highways and city roads alike. The car didn't attract too much attention, since people looked at its appendages and assumed it was another version of the Google Street View car.
While there are still thorny engineering and legal issues with autonomous cars, they have suddenly become a tangible reality. Maybe one day, we will have driverless auto shipper companies delivering driverless cars?
Contact information:
The Auto Shipping Hub
1824 Northwest 44th Street
Ocala, FL 34475
tony@autoshippinghub.com
http://www.autoshippinghub.com/
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About The Auto Shipping Hub
Auto Shipping Hub is a nationwide auto transport company that has used these principles to offer unmatched customer service and individualized price quotes, and to maintain clear lines of communication with all its customers.
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