driverless

Who's to blame when a driverless car goes astray?

If you rob a bank and get away in a driverless Prius, will the owner be indicted as the driver? Or will Toyota? Or maybe Google?

If your driverless car decides -- as so many machines do in movies -- that it has a mind of its own, will you be responsible when it decides to mount the curb and plow straight into your favorite donut store? And what if someone hacks into your driverless car and you suddenly end up in Alaska, with an instruction to mow down moose?

You'll tell me this will never happen. I will point you to the fine profits regularly earned by the world's insurance companies.

I suspect that not everyone has the answers yet for all the ramifications of ceding your steering wheel to Google's machines.

Thankfully, though, all those who have the deepest knowledge of the self-driving future will be meeting in June to have a freewheeling exchange.… Read more

Researchers develop a more accurate car navigation system

Driverless cars could get a big boost from a new system that researchers say will increase the accuracy of in-car satellite navigation systems by 90 percent.

Researchers say the system combines conventional GPS signals with data from sensors such as accelerometers and gyroscopes to determine a vehicle's position within six feet of its location, a dramatic reduction from the current margin of error of 50 feet. The system can be installed inexpensively in any vehicle, say researchers at Spain's Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, where the system was developed.

"We have managed to improve the determination of … Read more

Toyota, Audi to show off self-driving cars at CES

Get ready to see more cars on the road without a driver behind the wheel.

Toyota and Audi will demonstrate autonomous-driving features next week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, according to The Wall Street Journal. The Japanese automaker posted a five-second preview video that shows one of its luxury brand Lexus vehicles loaded with various sensors and carrying the caption, "Lexus advanced active safety research vehicle is leading the industry into a new automated era."

An Audi representative also told the Journal that it would be demonstrating similar capabilities at CES 2013, including the ability … Read more

Nook goes HD to face-off with Kindle

Wednesday's CNET Update puts a filter on it:

Barnes & Noble added two Nooks to the tablet family that have better screens and faster processors. Arriving in October, there's the 7-inch Nook HD (starting at $200 with 8 GB) and the 9-inch Nook HD+ (starting at $270 with 16 GB). They weigh in lighter than the competition and both have slots to add your own memory cards. But neither has a camera.

Gamers will be interested in the Wikipad, 10.1-inch tablet that has a controller dock with two analog sticks, a directional pad and four buttons. It … Read more

Google says California legislators could drive away robotic cars

During his testimony Monday, a Google representative said if California legislators amend a proposed driverless car bill to effectively forbid their "driverlessness," the state will be telling autonomous car technology to get out of town.

Authored by Senator Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima), the bill -- SB 1298 --aims to establish safety and performance standards for cars operated by computers and not people on California roads and highways. The California Assembly's Transportation Committee discussed the bill today, during which several members expressed concerns over liability issues and fear that the bill doesn't provide enough oversight to guarantee the … Read more

Activists want stronger privacy protections for driverless cars

Internet companies do whatever they want and it needs to stop, a consumer group said in an argument calling for more privacy protection in robotic cars.

Consumer Watchdog is hoping lawmakers amend SB 1298 -- a bill that is expected to be approved by the California Assembly's Transportation Committee today -- to ensure that driverless cars gather the data necessary to run the car and nothing more. A similar bill has already passed in Nevada.

The bill, sponsored by Senator Alex Padilla of Pacoima, Calif. would require the California Highway Patrol to develop rules and regulations to govern how … Read more

Google's self-driving cars win big in Nevada

Nevada is known as being one of the most lenient states when it comes to gambling, fireworks, and getting married; and now it's extending that easygoingness to driverless cars.

As of today, Nevada is the first state to let Google's self-driving cars on the roads. The state's Department of Motor Vehicles issued the tech giant the first license to see just how these cars act and react on busy streets and highways, according to the Las Vegas Sun.

"We're excited to receive the first testing license for self-driving vehicles in Nevada," a Google spokesperson … Read more

The 404 1,023: Where we go one step beyond (podcast)

Out of all the silly headlines that squirmed into my Google Reader feed yesterday, "Ashton Kutcher signed on to play Steve Jobs in upcoming biopic" stood out as the most obvious April Fools' prank, but the joke's on us when we find out today that it's true -- the star of such films as "The Butterfly Effect" and "What Happens in Vegas" will portray the Apple luminary in an indie film simply called "Jobs."… Read more

Look Ma, no hands! Google lands patent for robot car

Google has added one more thing to the list of things it can do over the Web: tell a car where to drive.

The Internet giant earlier this week was granted a patent for a method of controlling an autonomous vehicle. Specifically, it details how a vehicle can transition from being human-driven to autonomous mode.

A car could, for example, drive to a specific location and based on a visual indicator on a "landing strip," such as a bar code or radio tag, the car would then transition to autonomous operation. One could imagine, for example, bringing a … Read more

Apple looking to get rid of printer drivers?

Apple could be on a quest to eliminate our dependency on printer drivers, according to two recently published patent applications.

Filed on September 14, 2010, the two patent applications were published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office late last week.

As described by tech news site ConceivablyTech, the first patent application suggests a number of ways to cut out traditional printer drivers as the middleman. One method would use a "driverless printing technique" that would grab the necessary information from the printer itself. Another method would send the printer data to the cloud, where servers would … Read more