Saturday, January 19, 2013

Audi's self parking car


The technology of self driving cars is evolving quickly.  It wasn't that long ago that the DARPA Grand Challenge was created to encourage the development of autonomous cars.  Now Sebastian Thrun, whose team won the DARPA Grand Challenge, works for Google where his team has been creating self driving car technology (as well as Udacity, but that is a different story).  The technology is amazing, but when will we actually get to use it?  When will we have our own self driving cars?  As is often the case, I expect that the technology will be well ahead of legal and social acceptance of the technology.  It is moving quickly, however, as California and Nevada have made it legal for self driving cars to roam the streets under certain conditions.  Still, it will be 2040 before you'll be able to get by without a driver's license.

In the mean time, there are places where the self driving technology may show up.  In the video above, Audi show's their concept of a car that parks itself.  This makes a lot of sense.  All the self driving happens on private property under very controlled circumstances.

We may see this well before 2040.  Of course, my question is what does the car do if there are no parking places?

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