This is real cruise-control

Cruise-control will have a whole new meaning if and when Google gets their autonomous vehicle technology commercially available.

The 300,000 kiometres spent on the road has been used to collecting mountains of data to learn more about how to interact with other objects on or around the road. Seated atop the cars are a laser-camera with a 360 degree view, GPS and an on-board computer to crunch all the data in real-time, located in the trunk.

The data collected helps engineers indentify various bugs and possible improvements such as how to more efficiently identify stop lights and predict when they are likely to change, how to avoid unexpected objects on the road, and various other aspects of driving. This is not, as of now, commercially viable as the technology is still evolving.

The cars are aimed firstly for people with disabilities wanting to get around, and reducing gridlock by using "smarter" driving techniques. By creating a car which can detect traffic, other vehicles, and surroundings, calculate the best combination of lane changes and speed, grid-lock may soon be a thing of the past.

Professor Vlad Wojcik, from the department of Computer Science at Brock University, said that although these technologies are evolving, they aren't ready just yet.

"The urban environment poses more difficulties; [yet] automated vehicles are now capable of navigating slowly through simulated urban environments, closed to city traffic," said Wojcik.

Now self-driving cars may sound scary to some, after all we have all had a computer which had an error, likely printer related, right before that paper was due – when we needed it the most.

However, as Wojcik admits, humans do make mistakes, and computers may soon be able to drive better than them. There was, however, one small accident involving one of Google's Prii, but they released a statement saying that the car was in fact being manually driven by a person at the time of the accident, not the on-board driving system.

The new technology must develop to take full advantage of parallel computing technology and developing the means to allow computers to understand their surroundings like humans do, said Wojcik. These are two technologies which he has personally made significant contributions to.

We depend on computers to do exactly what they are supposed to daily. Our cell phones wake us up in the morning, our computers transmit huge amounts of data in almost "speed-of-light" rates and we depend on them greatly.

Should cars "learn" how to drive well, they will be safer than human drivers, which regrettably said, are prone to errors. These cars have successfully driven through many different terrains, traffic conditions and even at night. Imagine not needing to worry about driving late at night or in poor conditions because your car doesn't rely on "seeing" the way you do.

"Not only our labour can be replaced; we can be replaced too," said Wojcik.

The technology will need to continue evolving and the kinks will need to be ironed out to garner wide-spread implementation.  

"Lack of comprehensive computer vision algorithms and lack of parallel computers capable of executing these algorithms in real time is the major obstacle," said Wojcik.

A proof-of-concept video of the technology behind the cars shows how they are able to detect their surroundings and even stop mid-way through a turn when a pedestrian decided to cross in front of the vehicle, despite the car being close to completing the turn. It yielded in real-time to pedestrians regardless of being mid-way through the turn.

Throughout the data collection and testing process they were able to add in patches and updates which would improve the tracking of all nearby vehicles, people and even cyclists.

The problem concerning full adoption of these technologies, as well as supplementary navigation systems, is not only a technological issue, but a political one as well, said Wojcik.

Be on the lookout for technological and political developments in this field. Catching up on sleep or a good book during your daily commute will likely be a welcome perk of living in the future.

For a particularly impressive show of this technology check out http://youtu.be/oMdcWHnbhsw.