While some may view Google’s recent announcement of designing a self-driving car as having the potential to revolutionize the automobile industry, some are hesitant to embrace the new technology, citing a lack of confidence in the machine’s ability to navigate the roadways safely and accurately.
“The problem that I see is that traffic comes from all angles,” said Fazil Najafi, professor in the Department of Civil and Coastal Engineering at UF. “People are careless.”
According to Google, the automated cars use video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to “see” traffic. They also use detailed maps, collected using manually driven vehicles, to navigate the road.
Najafi said it would be marvelous if the sensors are able to detect traffic safely and accurately from all angles; however, he is not sure if that is possible yet.
Erin Mullins, a sophomore engineering major at UF, believes there could be problems with this software on a mass production scale.
“It would take a while for it to be safe,” Mullins said. “If one malfunctions, something could happen to the mechanics of the other surrounding cars because they would probably be connected on the same frequency.”
According to the World Health Organization, there are more than 1.2 million deaths caused by road traffic accidents every year. Google said it hopes to reduce that by at least half through the use of technology.
Although Google is still in the experimental stage of this project, they foresee this software having enormous potential to advance transportation.
Jay Nancarrow, a Google press correspondent, said that while Google was not going to speculate on the next steps of the project as it is in the initial stages, they are committed to designing the best technology possible.
”We are 100 percent focused on the immediate computer science and robotics challenges we are trying to solve,” he said.
