Power Chords Pump Up Solar Cell Efficiency

                        Want to make solar cells more efficient? Crank up the tunes.

Researchers from Queen Mary University and Imperial College in London built a solar cell that generates current from both the sun and sound waves.

Safa Shoaee, Joe Briscoe, James R. Durrant, and Steve Dunn took an ordinary polymer solar cell and attached a layer of zinc oxide to it. The zinc oxide formed tiny rods, like hairs, except these were only nanometers long.

When the scientists exposed the cell to noise along with light, it generated more current than with the light alone. The sounds that gave the biggest power boost came from pop and rock music.

The increase in power wasn’t just because zinc oxide and polymer have a certain taste in tunes. Zinc oxide is a piezoelectric material. That means it generates current when bent or twisted, or, in reverse, bends and twists when a current is applied. Piezoelectric materials are common; they show up in buzzers and small speakers a lot (the piezoelectric stuff is what makes the sound).

When the scientists played rock or pop, there were more high-frequency sounds and beats, which have more energy than lower frequency ones. Beats, as on a drum, packed a lot of energy into a short period of time.

When the sound waves hit the zinc oxide, it bent it and generated electricity. It took surprisingly little sound, about 75 decibels, to produce 40 percent more power. The sound was about the amount one would hear near a busy highway or a sort-of-noisy restaurant.

Dunn said in a Queen Mary University video that he wants to make bigger devices, and eventually see them in any area where there’s a lot of ambient noise. Restaurants and train stations could use the cells to power displays without batteries, taking advantage of the sun when it’s available and the noise when it isn’t — or using both.

Bacteria-Powered Light Bulb Is Electricity-Free

Bacteria is experiencing a boon as of late. Just recently, microorganisms have been used to make a better sunscreen. Another bright idea comes from scientists who are using bacteria as the key ingredient in a biological light bulb that requires no electricity.

Created by three undergraduates at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, the so-called Biobulb will include a genetically engineered species of E. coli bacteria, the kind living inside the intestines of humans and other animals. Normally, these bacteria don’t glow in the dark, but researchers plan to introduce a loop of DNA to the microbes that will give them the genes for bioluminescence. The bacteria will glow like lightning bugs, jellyfish and bioluminescent plankton.

“The Biobulb is essentially a closed ecosystem in a jar,” biochemistry major Michael Zaiken said in the project’s video pitch. “It’s going to contain several different species of microorganisms, and each organism plays a role in the recycling of vital nutrients that each of the other microbes need to survive.”

Those microorganisms feed the E. coli, which will be retrofitted with a new genetic circuit to provide the code for a set of proteins that Zaiken says will “recruit, use and recycle cellular fuel” to emit light. It’s kind of like making a terrarium inside a small light bulb.

Zaiken says the bulb could be recharged by ambient light sources found around the house during the day. The idea is that such light would feed the microorganisms that feed the E.coli, keeping them alive and repeatedly glowing for days, or even months.

Researchers say they plan on experimenting with different bioluminescence proteins to determine which species’ native genes produce the best glow. ”We also plan to experiment with techniques to combat mutation in the plasmid, different colored light emission, and different triggers for the activation of the glowing bacteria,” the researchers write.

No word yet on how much light a Biobulb would give off, but the project is still in the development stage as a finalist in the Popular Science #CrowdGrant Challenge. Zaiken and his teammates – Alexandra Cohn and AnaElise Beckman — recently launched a crowdfunding campaign for an easy-to-use Biobulb kit.

“Many people don’t understand what exactly synthetic biology is,” Cohn says in her team’s video. “What if there was a way to show people how synthetic biology can be used in a resourceful and artistic fashion?”

via PopSci

What is an OLED?

OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diodes) is a flat light emitting technology, made by placing a series of organic thin films between two conductors. When electrical current is applied, a bright light is emitted. OLEDs can be used to make displays and lighting. Because OLEDs emit light they do not require a backlight and so are thinner and more efficient than LCD displays(which do require a white backlight).

OLEDs are not just thin and efficient - they can also be made flexible (even rollable) and transparent.

A flexible OLED display prototype

OLED vs LCD

• Lower power consumption

• Faster refresh rate and better contrast

• Greater brightness - The screens are brighter, and have a fuller viewing angle

• Exciting displays - new types of displays, that we do not have today, like ultra-thin, flexible or transparent displays

• Better durability - OLEDs are very durable and can operate in a broader temperature range

• Lighter weight - the screen can be made very thin, and can even be 'printed' on flexible surfaces

The future - flexible and transparent OLED displays

• Curved OLED displays, placed on non-flat surfaces

• Wearable OLEDs

• Transparent OLEDs embedded in windows

• OLEDs in car windshields

• New designs for lamps

• And many more we cannot even imagine today...

OLEDs are not just thin and efficient - they can also be made flexible (even rollable) and transparent.

OLED displays have the following advantages over LCD displays:

It turns out that because OLEDs are thin and simple - they can be used to create flexible and even transparent displays. This is pretty exciting as it opens up a whole world of possibilities:

How to Give Prosthetic Hands Touch Sense

Although prosthetic hands give amputees a way to grasp objects, they do not offer a sense of touch. That means the person has to watch his or her robotic hand as it reaches to push or pick up an item.

Now researchers at the University of Chicago might have found a way to add touch to prosthetic limbs. The research, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is funded in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and it’s not hard to see why the military would be interested. Beyond dreams of cyborg warriors, there’s the more prosaic matter of helping injured veterans.

The study, led by Sliman Bensmaia, assistant professor in biology and anatomy, identified patterns of neural activity that occur when monkeys manipulate objects and then induced these patterns artificially.

First he and his team connected electrodes to areas of a monkey’s brain that corresponded to each of its finger. The idea was to find out what kind of brain activity occurred when monkeys pick up or touch something.

Next, the researchers touched the animals’ fingers, using a device that applied a specific amount of pressure. The monkeys were rewarded if they correctly identified which finger was touched — the monkey just had to look in the right direction. Next, the researchers repeated the same action, but in reverse, sending an artificial signal through the electrode to the monkey’s brain, which caused the monkey to act the same way it would had it’s fingers been touched by the device — identifying fingers as touched even when they weren’t.

The next step was the sense of pressure. They trained the monkeys to identify whether the pressure on their fingers was smaller or larger. In this case, Bensmaia’s group wrote a computer program to generate the same kind of electrical current that gave rise to pressure sensations.  Once again, the animals reacted the same way as if they had actually touched something.

Finally, the scientists examined the brain signals that occurred when there was a “contact event.” When the monkey’s hand was initially touched or pressure released, their brains showed a spike in activity. This spike is in addition to the signals for pressure and the individual fingers — it’s what tells the brain that there’s something in the hand to begin with before the signal settles down. The scientists duplicated that brain activity spike with artificial signals as well.

That implies that by programming those signals into an artificial limb, it’s possible to duplicate the sensation of touch. Just as natural limbs send signals to the brain, the artificial one would do so, too, except it wold be through electrodes linked to the relevant parts of the brain rather than nerve cells. An amputee would actually feel the object they are touching with such a prosthetic.

The setup hasn’t been tested in humans yet. But the monkey results are promising, and it could solve not only the problem of touch sense, but that of sensing limb position and possibly even help a person balance on his or her artificial legs.

Giving Speechless People a Unique Voice

Complications after surgery left film critic Roger Ebert without a voice. To communicate, he used the text-to-speech program designed for Apple computers

Perhaps the two most famous speechless individuals are physicist Stephen Hawking and the late Robert Ebert, a film critic. To communicate with other individuals, both men used computers that generated synthesized voices, which sounded tinny, stilted and unnatural.

Now new technology could give speechless people a natural voice as unique to them as voices are to people who can speak.

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DCI

“Right now, people who need to use synthesized voices to talk for them use a handful of generic voices, because creating them is time-consuming and costly,” said Rupal Patel, Ph.D, associate professor at Northeastern University. “We feel strongly the voice from the device should reflect something about that individual.”

With that philosophy, Patel, along with her research and development partner Tim Bunnell, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Delaware, developed VocaliD, a product that blends real human voices from healthy talkers with characteristics of the client’s unique speech patterns. The technique, called voice morphing, enables Patel and Bunnell to create a voice that is unique to the individual, and no longer has the now-traditional computerized sound.

The technology has positive implications for individuals who are autistic, or who suffer from disorders such as ALS or stroke, Patel said.

“There’s a relatively broad market of two-and-a-half to three million people who use devices to talk for them,” said Patel. “We’d love to see this technology being available to that population. We feel that if we can personalize the device, they will be more likely to use it and more socially acceptable.”

The technology is based on the fact that even speechless individuals can still make sounds, Bunnell said“We can always grab characteristics of their voice and reapply the process as they go along,” he said. “With individuals who have neuro-degenerative diseases such as ALS, we capture speech from them right after they’re diagnosed, while they’re still speaking fluently and create their new voice from that. It captures elements of their voice that default devices don’t typically use.”

Right now, although the technology is already developed, it is primarily a windows-based software product. Further development will enable the product to be used on I-devices (I-Phone, I-Pad).

“Making that happen is really more of an engineering kind of feat,” said Patel, who is cross-appointed in speech and language pathology, computer science and engineering. “What we’re doing here is manipulating the voice. There are no other labs doing this kind of work, although there are other efforts in trying to build voices. But they are categorically different because we are using a small amount of speech from our target talker.”

In addition to creating voices for speechless individuals, Bunnell sees other long term applications for VocaliD.

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“It has lots of possible applications,” he said. “Those include things like rapidly developing multiple voices for games, or voices for reading books or novels. Right now the quality of the voices is still variable. Sometimes we are able to produce very good sounding voices and sometimes we can’t. We are still trying to work that out. This is an ongoing research project.”

Ultimately, users will likely be able to communicate in their own unique voices, from mobile communication devices as compact as a cell phone.

First Human Brain-to-Brain Mind Meld Achieved

This year, we’ve seen remarkable breakthroughs in rat-to-rat brain interfaces and even human-to-rat interfaces that put us one step closer to telepathy. But now researchers at the University of Washington have achieved the ultimate: a non-invasive telepathic interface between two humans brains.

By wearing an EEG cap that read his brain’s electrical signals, UW computer scientist Rajesh Rao was able to use his thoughts to control the actions of assistant professor Andrea Stucco, who wore a transcranial magnetic stimulation coil that stimulates brain activity. A code was used to translate brain signals from EEG readings into brain commands.

With both hands on his chair’s arm rests, Rao envisioned his right hand moving, as if he was clicking a “fire” button on a cannon shooting video game. Across campus, Stucco had his back to the computer screen where the video game was playing out. Still, he involuntary moved his right hand and pushed his keyboard’s space bar to fire the cannon.

“It was both exciting and eerie to watch an imagined action from my brain get translated into actual action by another brain,” Rao said in a university news release. “This was basically a one-way flow of information from my brain to his. The next step is having a more equitable two-way conversation directly between the two brains.”

Before you clutch your skull and run for the hills, Rao said the technology only reads certain kinds of simple brain signals, not a person’s thoughts. Also, the interface doesn’t give anyone the capability to control actions against a bother’s will. Still, Stocco jokingly referred to the breakthrough as a “Vulcan mind meld.”

In the future, researchers say the technology could allow a person with disabilities to communicate his or her thoughts or help a flight attendant or passenger land an airplane should the pilot become incapacitated. Next, Rao and Stocco plan to conduct an experiment that will transmit more complex information from brain to brain, which will require a larger pool of participants. In the meantime, check out the jaw-dropping video of Rao and Stucco’s mind meld.

via PopSci

Pee Could Power Future Robots

Researchers have found a way to turn urine into electric power that could drive a robot.

There's a new use for artificial hearts, and it involves a more taboo bodily fluid than blood. A device that mimics the squeezing action of the human heart has been used to pump urine into a microbial fuel cell, which could power robots that convert the waste into electricity.

"In the future, we hope the robots might be used in city environments for remote sensing," where they could help to monitor pollution, said study researcher Peter Walters, an industrial designer at the University of the West of England. "It could refuel from public lavatories, or urinals, " Walters said.

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Walters and colleagues at the University of Bristol have created four generations of these so-called EcoBots over the past decade. Previous versions of the robots ran off energy from rotten produce, dead flies, wastewater and sludge.

Each is powered by a microbial fuel cell, containing live microorganisms like those found in the human gut or sewage treatment plants. The microbes digest the waste (or urine) and produce electrons, which can be harvested to produce electrical current, Walters said.

The researchers have already proved the microbial fuel cells can use urine power to charge a mobile phone.

Now, the team has developed a device, made of artificial muscles, that delivers real human urine to the robot's microbial power stations. The pump is constructed from smart materials, called shape memory alloys, which remember their shape after being deformed.

Carbon Dioxide Turned Into Electricity

Humans generate billions of tons of carbon dioxide every year. A group of researchers in the Netherlands asked whether it would be better to use the gas to generate power rather than letting it end up in the atmosphere, where it can do more harm than good.

At Wetsus, the center for excellence for sustainable water technology in Leeuwarden, Bert Hamelers and his team came up with the idea of using a combination of membranes and water to pull current out of CO2. They describe the idea in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters.

To get the water out of the CO2, the scientists set up a tanks filled with water. On one side of the tank, they put a membrane that allows positively charged ions to pass through and on the other side, they put a membrane that allows only negatively charged ions to pass through. Beyond the membrane is an electrode. When the carbon dioxide is pumped through the water it separates into positive hydrogen ions and negatively charge bicarbonate. Since the membranes only allow one kind of ion through, a net flow of electrons — or current — move from one side to the other.

In the paper, Hamelers estimates that harvesting all the carbon dioxide from homes and power plants could produce about 1,570 terawatts of additional electricity annually — about 400 times the annual electrical output of the Hoover Dam. And it wouldn’t add any more CO2 to the atmosphere.

The next steps will be to see if the process can be scaled up form lab-bench sizes and work out how to capture and separate the CO2 at industrial scales. It certainly gives a new meaning to recycling.

via American Chemical Society, Environmental Science & Technology Letters

Electronic Blood' Could Power Next-Gen Computers

It’s often said that a smartphone contains all the computing power NASA used to put people on the moon. But while today’s computer chips are incredibly capable, they’re still not as energy efficient as they could be.The more powerful chips get, the hotter they run and the more energy they require to cool down, so they don’t fry their electronic components inside.

 As reported by the BBC, IBM is looking for a solution. One idea is to cool computers the way the human body cools its brain — by using a fluid, i.e. blood. IBM’s Patrick Ruch and Bruno built a proof-of-concept computer chips that contains tiny channels that would circulate a fluid past electronic components, cooling them down. They think an electrolyte similar to what goes inside a battery would work best for the “electronic blood.” As it passed through the channels, it would not only dissipate heat, but would also deliver energy to the chips. It would work because as the fluid traveled through ever-smaller channels, it would pass Electrodes that would pick up the electrons from the fluid and use them to create a current.

The ability to cool heat this way would allow scientists to pack more processing power into a smaller space or even fatten up otherwise flat computer chips into block-like structure. Right now that can’t be done, because chips rely on circulating air to stay cool and piling processors on top of each other traps too much heat.

The “electronic blood” cooling system could save on energy costs, too. Google, for example, spends millions of dollars on air conditioning bills to keep its data centers cool, which expend enough energy per year to power 200,000 homes.

Ruch and Michel’s system for cooling has a way to go. There’s the matter of choosing a workable electrolyte and fabricating chips with tiny channels in them.

But more than that, the project is part of an effort to get computers to work the way a brain does. Brains are pretty efficient — most of the energy a human brain uses goes to processing information. Only a small fraction of the energy in the brain gets turned into heat. That isn’t true of computers.

To get an idea of the difference, think of the competition between IBM’s Watson and the humans who played Jeopardy! Each brain used only about 20 Watts, while Watson ate up 84 kilowatts. If we’re going to fit computers that think like humans into spaces smaller than a semi-trailer, it only makes sense that they should cool themselves as efficiently as our brains do.require to cool down, so they don’t fry their electronic components inside.

Artificial Sun Built To Brighten Dark Winter Days

Five months out of the year — starting in September and ending in March — the Norwegian town of Rjukan remains cast in the shadow of surrounding mountains. But officials are erecting a new installation, one that will permanently shed light on the small valley town during the dark winter months.

As part of the The Mirror Project, engineers have begun installing three enormous rectangular mirrors on the face of the mountains that hem Rjukan in on either side. The mirrors will reflect sunlight down into the town square and become a sunny meeting place.

The 328-square foot mirrors are heliostatic mirrors, which are normally found on solar farms, and are controlled by a central computer. A solar-powered sensor will track the sun and allow the mirrors to tilt so that the most optimal amount of sunlight is reflected. The city is spending $835,000 on the project. Helicopters recently installed the mirrors this month, as first tests are slated for September.

A 2,000-square foot circle of sunlight will eventually light up the town square, which will soon install an ice skating rink. How this sun-shiny project will effect Norway’s infamous black metal scene remains to be seen. I for one would love to see some face-painted Satan-worshiping metal heads don pairs of ice skates as they perfect their butterfly jumps and triple axels. I mean, they’ve already taken up surfing.

via Inhabitat

No Battery Required for This Wireless Device

Sending texts after a phone’s battery dies sounds impossible, right? Soon it might not, thanks to a new technology that not only uses TV and Wi-Fi signals for device communication, it taps those signals as a power source. No batteries required.

Developed by researchers from the University of Washington, the technology is known as “ambient backscatter” and could potentially create networks of devices and sensors that can transmit information by reflecting existing signals to exchange information, without the need for internal batteries.

“We can repurpose wireless signals that are already around us into both a source of power and a communication medium,” lead researcher Shyam Gollakota, a UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering, said in a press release. “It’s hopefully going to have applications in a number of areas including wearable computing, smart homes and self-sustaining sensor networks.”

Researchers built small, credit card-sized devices equipped with antennas that detect, harness and reflect those signals to similar devices. The team tested the prototypes in various locations around the Seattle area, including a street corner, inside an apartment building and on top of a parking garage. Locations ranged from less than a half a mile away from a TV tower to about 6.5. miles away.

The receiving devices picked up a signal at a rate of 1 kilobit per second when 2.5 feet away from their outdoor counterparts and 1.5 feet apart when inside. That’s enough to transmit a text message, sensor reading and contact information.

Researchers envision the technology being used in sensors that monitor bridges for hairline cracks. Potentially, the tech could be built in to cell phones to provide emergency power when the battery has died. While the applications are endless, researchers want to advance the capacity and range of the devices.

“Ambient Backscatter” sounds like a fantastic name for an electroclash band, so while you round up your synth-playing posse, check out this video of your band’s namesake device.

via University of Washington

Coin Card Replaces Everything in Your Wallet

A card-swipe dongle ships with the device so you can connect it to your phone to upload your cards onto the companion app.

If you've been trying to slim down your bulky wallet, a new product launching may be the device of your dreams. Despite its name,Coin is a connected credit/debit card that could replace all the plastic in your wallet. Expected to ship in Summer 2014, the device will retail for $100, but you can get it at a pre-order price of $50 starting today via Coin's website.

Coin will take on the identity of all your swipe-able cards such as credit, gift, loyalty and membership cards. A card-swipe dongle ships with the device so you can connect it to your phone to upload your cards onto the companion app. That information is then stored on Coin. Tap a button on Coin to toggle through a digital display of the cards stored and select the one you want to use. The device will then take on the information and identity of the card you've selected and can be swiped for use anywhere cards are accepted. Storage and communication with the app are protected by 128-bit encryption.

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If the idea of ever losing your Coin sounds horrifying (as it should), here's some good news for you. Coin detects when your phone is near via a low-power Bluetooth signal and notifies you when you're a certain distance away from it. You won't need to be near your Coin for it to work, but you will need your phone and the dongle to add, manage or delete existing cards.

The device will also disable itself "if it's lost," according to a press release, but it isn't clear whether you can do this from the app or if it does so automatically based on distance from your phone. Each Coin has a battery that will last for two years and will not demagnetize if left near other cards or magnets, and like other cards it is shock and water-resistant.

Neither the press release nor video address the many security concerns with Coin, such as the concept of getting merchants to accept a generic credit card without questioning if the cardholder is the original owner of the card. Coin could also be a card thief's dream come true, making it much easier to store the information from stolen cards on one convenient device

Microprocessor Powered By Wine

Pour a tall one for super-efficient computer chips. Literally. Device engineers at Intel have created a microprocessor that powers up from a single glass of red wine.

The silicon microprocessor was demonstrated recently during a talk (video) by Genevieve Bell at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. “If we want to have mobile technology that doesn’t burden us down, that knows us, it turns out we’re going to need really, really low power,” she said.

The system was made in Intel Labs as part of an internal project to redefine what low power really means. While the demo was intentionally short on details, the engineer explained that it’s a bit like that school project where you power an LED with DIY lemon batteries (video) but instead of lemons, they used wine — this being California after all.

Red wine was poured into a glass equipped with copper and zinc parts. That was enough to provide the microwatts needed to power an accelerometer and the Intel communications and processing system. This enabled the engineer to move a flower image around on the computer screen in real time by moving the accelerometer.

Ultimately the aim is to produce device-charging tech on the microwatt level that doesn’t sacrifice performance. Such tech could mean a boost for anyone using a computer while traveling, but also in areas where electricity is scarce. Red wine was used here, but in the future Intel Labs envisions sophisticated systems that draw power from ambient light or even the warmth of your skin.

Intel’s solution is still years from practical implementation, though, as IDG News Service’s Agam Shah reported. Oh darn, that means they’ll probably need to pull out a few more corks. Cheers, you crazy engineers

Stunning Solar Homes Can Actually Be Affordable

This year’s Solar Decathlon contest, organized by the U.S. Department of Energy, saw several firsts. This was the first time the American event was not held in Washington, D.C., the first time it coincided with a partial government shutdown, and the first time high winds challenged the competitors. It also officially judged the most affordable solar homes yet.

This is the sixth time the Solar Decathlon has taken place since 2002. For the competition, collegiate teams selected from around the world spent two years designing and creating solar-powered houses. Then they came to Irvine, Calif., and set up the homes at Orange County Great Park. Since Oct. 3, teams have been showing their innovative solar-powered houses to the public and living in them to demonstrate their strengths across 10 contests that were either measured or judged by jury members.

Right before the event began, politics in Washington hit the fan. Even though the government had basically shut down, the DOE-run Solar Decathlon proceeded as planned because it was supported by 2012 federal funding and more than 30 private-sector sponsors. Federal employee participation was limited to the personnel needed for the show to go on. Then it was a whirlwind, sometimes literally. Last week the event was closed temporarily when the Santa Ana winds whipped throughthe site.

Team Austria was announced as the overall winner today, edging out other teams in areas such as engineering, hot water and energy balance. But the real story to me was Norwich University’s Delta T-90 House, which won the Affordability Contest with a house that cost an estimated $168,385 to build (go Vermont!). Resembling a modern log cabin, their house was designed specifically for New Englanders as a way to reduce the high fuel costs that come from heating old homes.

Norwich University crunched the numbers. In 15 years, the upfront cost for the house would pay back the difference in cost of a mobile home, according to the team’s calculations. They achieved this by using 16-inch walls with deep-set windows that minimize heat loss, as well as a mini-split heat pump HVAC system that has a single supply diffuser for compact heating and cooling, avoiding the need for ductwork or obvious mechanical elements.

This was only the second Solar Decathlon where affordability was its own category. In 2011, the teams that tied in the category built homes costing $229,890 and $249,568 respectively. All the homes this year were built for under $600,000. I’ve noticed that since the competition’s early days, solar power for the home has gone from a luxury you could only see in select neighborhoods to something you can pick up at the local hardware store.

Solar power has also scaled up surprisingly well in recent years. On Wednesday, the Solana solar power plant in Arizona switched on. One of the largest of its kind in the world, it can power 70,000 households day or night with help from enormous salt batteries. Solar power continues to make its way into more and more homes across the country, whether on the roof or through the outlets. And now it won’t take all your money first.

Photos: A rendering of the winning Solar Decathlon 2013 house built by Team Austria (top). and the Norwich University Team’s solar house kitchen (bottom). Credit: U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon.

How Google driverless car works?

Technology

Google's robotic test cars have about $150,000 in equipment including a $70,000 LIDAR (laser radar) system. The range finder mounted on the top is a Velodyne 64-beam laser. This laser allows the vehicle to generate a detailed 3D map of its environment. The car then takes these generated maps and combines them with high-resolution maps of the world, producing different types of data models that allow it to drive itself.

Road testing

The project team has equipped a test fleet of at least ten vehicles, consisting of sixToyota Prius, an Audi TT, and three Lexus RX450h, each accompanied in the driver's seat by one of a dozen drivers with unblemished driving records and in the passenger seat by one of Google's engineers. The car has traversed San Francisco'sLombard Street, famed for its steep hairpin turns and through city traffic. The vehicles have driven over the Golden Gate Bridge and around Lake Tahoe. The system drives at the speed limit it has stored on its maps and maintains its distance from other vehicles using its system of sensors. The system provides an override that allows a human driver to take control of the car by stepping on the brake or turning the wheel, similar to cruise control systems already found in many cars today.

On March 28, 2012, Google posted a YouTube video showing Steve Mahan, a Morgan Hill California resident, being taken on a ride in its self-driving Toyota Prius. In the video, Mahan states "Ninety-five percent of my vision is gone, I'm well past legally blind". In the description of the YouTube video, it is noted that the carefully programmed route takes him from his home to a drive-through restaurant, then to the dry cleaning shop, and finally back home.

In August 2012, the team announced that they have completed over 300,000 autonomous-driving miles (500 000 km) accident-free, typically have about a dozen cars on the road at any given time, and are starting to test them with single drivers instead of in pairs.Three U.S. states have passed laws permitting autonomous cars as of September 2012: Nevada, Florida, and California. A law proposed in Texas would establish criteria for allowing "autonomous motor vehicles"

Incidents

In August 2011, a human-controlled Google driverless car was involved in a crash near Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA. Google has stated that the car was being driven manually at the time of the accident. A previous incident involved a Google driverless car being rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light.