14 Things You Should Know About Driverless Cars

6. Driverless Cars use Mature Radar, Camera, and Laser Technologies

To date, all of the self-driving automobiles debuted for the public by Google and other auto manufacturers are employing mature camera, radar, and laser technologies to guide their vehicles. There have not been any new significant technological advances announced that are making driverless cars possible. Instead, GPS, radar, camera, and laser sensors are being used to monitor the vehicles surroundings constantly. For the Google Car, these inputs are being used to cross-reference the auto’s position on extremely detailed Google Maps to ensure the vehicle is on the right track. The overall system is very similar to those in use by Mercedes-Benz and Bosch, albeit on a “clean-sheet” designed auto to help improve the overall performance of the auto’s hardware on the road. It is expected that several of the auto manufacturers will introduce autonomous functions such as self-parking in the near term to help get consumers used to the idea of their car doing tasks without driver intervention using these existing technologies.