The thought of a self-driving car seems like an idea snatched from the pages of science fiction. The idea of one seems fantastic and scary at the same time. Last week at the Computer History Museum, Google had one of their self-driving cars on display where we got to learn a little bit more about how they work.

I suppose if you can afford to design and build a self-driving car, you might as well do it in a Lexus SUV, as you see here. None of my pictures of the inside of the car came out very well, but other than a small computer module mounted to the dash and a big red panic button on the center console, it looks pretty much like the inside of every other Lexus SUV. The car begins with a detailed map of the area in which it will be driving (think: super detailed Google Map). That’s the “known”. Then it discovers the “unknown” (cars, traffic lights, people) using a LIDAR system mounted to the top of the car.

LIDAR (Laser RADAR) scans the environment and identifies things that are not on the map. Here is a picture of what the LIDAR “sees” …

…and how it interprets that into 3D objects.

The current version of the software is detailed and advanced enough that not only can it tell the difference between things like cars, bicyclists and pedestrians, but it also reacts to them differently. One example the demo gave was that the software can identify a bicyclist, watch for hand signals, and then slow down if the cyclist indicates that they are about to turn in front of the car. The software is also programmed to identify orange traffic cones and speed limit signs and react accordingly. The demo did not explain how the car would deal with Oklahoma potholes.

Another video explained how human drivers, behind the wheel, continue to teach the software how to drive comfortably. If the car brakes too quickly or turns too sharply, the human driver can correct those actions and the computer will learn from it. Very interesting!

After we left the museum we drove through the middle of Google’s campus. We couldn’t get inside for a tour but we did see tons of people on those multicolored Google bicycles, and we also managed to get a picture of the front of the building. Unfortunately as you can see, one of our thumbs was partically over the camera lens, which explains why neither of us work there.