Ah yes, Halloween, the time for trick or treats, scary stories and family bonding, that is, if you live in a normal house. Apparently, Google finds the Halloween as an ideal time to test and showcase the advancements it made for its proprietary Self-Driving Car Project.
On Oct. 31, as families gathered to celebrate Halloween around its facility in Mountain View, Google brought out its self-driving cars and let the kids and families mingle with them. And while the kids were having fun around it, Google deemed that it was the good time to get things done and test the vehicles' functionalities.
"This week, lots of little ghouls, superheroes and even robots were running around Google with their families, so we asked them to hang out around our parked cars," said Google in its Google+ post. "This gives our sensors and software extra practice at recognizing children in all their unique shapes and sizes, even when they're in odd costumes."
According to Google's post, the cars were taught to be more cautious when it recognizes the presence of children around it.
"When our sensors detect children — costumed or not — in the vicinity, our software understands that they may behave differently," Google explained.
Furthermore, Google elaborates that children's movements are more likely to be unpredictable. For instance, children, for whatever reason they deem valid, run across the roads without prior notice or regard for their surroundings. Some decide to run down a sidewalk with the same obliviousness and thus, higher chances of accidents that may result in serious injuries.
Note that in July 2015, the Google's driverless cars were reported to be involved in a total of 23 road accidents, on most of which, the cars got rear-ended by other motorists due to the cars not having organic responses. To address the problem, Google was reported to be incorporating a touch of human recklessness into the self-driving cars' artificial intelligence.
While Google tries to make its self-driving vehicle the safest it could be, it hasn't been dent-free. In July, one of its prototypes was involved in a minor road mishap — its first injury accident. However, the company emphasized that it was not the fault of its autonomous car.
In the field of experimental ethics, experts also discussed how self-driving vehicles should decide in scenarios that might result in tragic accident.
Google is not the only one to work on or experiment with self-driving vehicles. As Google works on the safety of its next wow-the-world technology, Japan is looking forward to self-driving taxis by 2020, China is experimenting on autonomous buses and Uber has partnered with University of Arizona to research on self-driving car technology.
