Robotic Cars: Taking over the world (right after they can move 20 ft without crashing)

Today, while driving home from school, I saw a car with some sort of spinning sensor on the top. I recognized the design from a NOVA episode I saw in 2007 about the yearly robot car races. From what I remember, the rotating block on top most likely uses sonar to rapidly send out sonar pings as the module rotates. The sonar waves bounce off of objects and return to the sensor. The elapsed time since the ping was sent out is calculated and determines the distance of the object. And of course, there is an on-board computer that gets the car from point A to point B.

The NOVA episode was quite entertaining as most cars had extreme difficulty moving around stacks of hay, much less driving on the open road. Kudos to the engineers who finally got one of these things to work.

I assume this isn't just a Halloween prank because it appeared that no one was touching a steering wheel (cruise control?). The sensor on top is pretty high-end. There were two extremely nerdy looking guys* in the front seats and only Target advertises for Halloween this early in the month.

And of course I was able to snap a couple pics of it before we passed them.**


It's only a matter of time before it becomes self-aware... and enslaves us all.


This is one of the big pluses to living in the Bay Area. Only in San Francisco will you see a robot driving people home.




Footnotes:



*: I mean this in the kindest of regards, meaning they're Not Even Remotely Dorky.
*: The robots may take our freedom, but they'll never take our highway!