Google Driverless Car – Data Stored in The Car Memory

“Self-driving cars will be far safer than human-driven cars” – Sergey Brin (Google’s co-founder)

According to Google, its driverless cars are actually safer than human drivers. The various units that it carries under its hood like the obstacle detection unit provides great situational awareness to its computer.

Apart from this, the robotic chauffeur carries various types of information in its memory that helps it to drive the car safely while it use to be in the autonomous mode.  Data like control instructions, detailed maps, user information are stored in autonomous computer. Here is a brief detail.

Control Instructions Stored in Google Driverless Car

The car contains various algorithms that helps the robotic chauffeur to drive the car in autonomous mode.

These algorithms and code contain instruction for robotic chauffeur like

• speeds to travel,
• where to look for traffic signals,
• where to stop for intersections or stop signs,
• what to do when driver has fallen asleep,
• when car will be entering in construction zone or area where there is high traffic,
• When to provide warning signal to fellow drivers or the driver of the vehicle and etc.

Thus, based on these instructions the robotic chauffeur takes decisions under various circumstances.

Detailed map information Stored in Google Driverless Car

The car includes highly detailed maps information. It has map identifying the shape and elevation of roadways, lane lines, intersections, crosswalks, speed limits, traffic signals and other such information.

The computer access this detailed map information to drive the vehicle efficiently. It also uses this map information to determine that whether the robotic chauffeur is able to control the vehicle or not.

For example, if the map data of a particular area is missing or the vehicle is present in highly crowded area or in a zone where construction is going on, then the computer will not take control and the driver has to drive the car by himself.

User Information in Google Driverless Car

In one of our post – Google Driverless Car: Limiting Destination Abilities will prevent Its Misuse; we mentioned that Google will be using user accounts in their driverless car. This means one has to verify his identity by providing his biometric credentials (finger print, eyes etc) to car computer.

This implies the car will store profile of each user in its memory and based on a user’s profile privileges, restrictions are imposed on the user. For example, a father can put a maximum speed limit to 60 mph whenever his son takes the car on a highway. All of these information along with a lot of other details are stored in the car memory.

You can see that the tech behind the car is very intriguing. Don’t miss any of our upcoming posts on Google Driverless car.

The next tells about Google’s self diagnosing system which finds a problem in car and then fixes it.