It is always amazing to see the rapid rate at which technology is growing. California is the latest state to allow testing of Google’s self-driving cars on the roads, though only with human passengers along as saftey means. Google co-founder Sergey Brin hopes that self-driving cars will be able to drive on public streets in five years or less. The cars use a combination of technologies, including radar sensors on the front, video cameras aimed at the surrounding area, various other sensors and artificial-intelligence software that helps steer. So far, the cars have been driven for more than 300,000 miles and 50,00 of those miles were without any intervention from the human drivers.

There is no doubt that it took hundreds and hundreds of hours to design and create these cars. The process in which was undertaken in order to get these cars done was one similar to a technique taught to us in class the “Deming Cycle”. Designers and engineers had to create a plan, manufacture the project, check the project and finally fix any problems if there were any. Also, when these cars do go into the market, the creators of these cars are going to have to do an instruction manual on how to use the machine. This is similar to the activity we did with the M&M’s, they are going to have to be very thrall for the average person to follow step by step on how to use it.

There is no doubt in my mind that this will be the future of transportation. We will eventually live in a society where there will be no human drivers. How will those big car fanatics respond to this? How long will it take for humans to fully be okay with giving full driving power to a machine? And will all current car manufactures be able to survive this new age of transportation?

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/25/tech/innovation/self-driving-car-california/index.html?npt=NP1