Google Car Drive Without Driver

Google announced this weekend that it’s been building robotic cars that have been driving themselves around California — down curvy Lombard Street in San Francisco, across the Golden Gate Bridge, along the Pacific Coast Highway, around Lake Tahoe and from Google’s Mountain View headquarters to Santa Monica (a 350-mile trip). So far, the cars have logged over 140,000 miles.

The company hasn’t said yet what it’s going to do with the cars, but they should be a good business for Google, because they draw heavily on Google’s data centers.

From Google Distinguished Software Engineer Sebastian Thrun:

Our automated cars use video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to “see” other traffic, as well as detailed maps (which we collect using manually driven vehicles) to navigate the road ahead. This is all made possible by Google’s data centers, which can process the enormous amounts of information gathered by our cars when mapping their terrain.

The New York Times has a detailed story on the cars here, including a description of what it’s like to ride in one.

Tech blogger Robert Scoble, meanwhile, interviewed one of the engineers who works on the cars — Mike Montemerlo, formerly of Stanford’s DARPA challenge team — back in 2007. Google hired several veterans of DARPA challenge teams.

Montemerlo “thinks about the act of driving in a much different way than you or I do,” Scoble writes. “This is a fascinating discussion where he talks about the car, the sensors used, the algorithms he’s developing, and the approach he’s using to get a car through an intersection at the same time as another robotic car is there.”

Sixth Sense Technology May Change How We Look at the World Forever

I can't really describe Sixth Sense in a line. Sure, it is a system that projects information about what surrounds you over objects' surfaces, but it's also much more. You just have to watch it:

(If you have the time, you can go through the whole video and Pattie Maes' explanation. If not, go to minute 3:10, where the cool demonstrations begin. There, Pranav Mistry—the MIT student who has implemented Sixth Sense—shows how it works)
Basically, Sixth Sense is a mini-projector coupled with a camera and a cellphone—which acts as the computer and your connection to the Cloud, all the information stored on the web. Sixth Sense can also obey hand gestures, like in the infamous Minority Report.

However, instead of requiring you to be in front of a big screen like Tom Cruise, Sixth Sense can do its magic—and a lot more—everywhere, even while you are jumping hysteric over Oprah's sofa.

The camera recognizes objects around you instantly, with the micro-projector overlaying the information on any surface, including the object itself or your hand. Then, you can access or manipulate the information using your fingers. Need to make a call? Extend your hand on front of the projector and numbers will appear for you to click. Need to know the time? Draw a circle on your wrist and a watch will appear. Want to take a photo? Just make a square with your fingers, highlighting what you want to frame, and the system will make the photo—which you can later organize with the others using your own hands over the air.

But those are just novelty applications. The true power of Sixth Sense lies on its potential to connect the real world with the Internet, and overlaying the information on the world itself. Imagine you are at the supermarket, thinking about what brand of soap is better. Or maybe what wine you should get for tonight's dinner. Just look at objects, hold them on your hands, and Sixth Sense will show you if it's good or bad, or if it fits your preferences or not.

Now take this to every aspect of your everyday life. You can be in a taxi going to the airport, and just by taking out your boarding pass, Sixth Sense will grab real time information about your flight and display it over the ticket. You won't need to do any action. Just hold it in front of your and it will work.

The key here is that Sixth Sense recognizes the objects around you, displaying information automatically and letting you access it in any way you want, in the simplest way possible.

Clearly, this has the potential of becoming the ultimate "transparent" user interface for accessing information about everything around us. If they can get rid of the colored finger caps and it ever goes beyond the initial development phase, that is. But as it is now, it may change the way we interact with the real world and truly give everyone complete awareness of the environment around us.