Google teaches driverless cars to honk (so in Hong Kong they’ll fit right in)
Electric cars, being virtually silent, need to let people know they are coming, Google engineers reason; unlike many human drivers they’ll be taught to toot their horns politely, considerately and safely
Google’s self-driving cars are getting some attitude. Company engineers have been working on teaching their autonomous vehicles the subtle – and often obnoxious – art of honking, according to Google’s May self-driving car report.
The innovation makes sense. After all, while Google’s 24 self-driving Lexus SUV fleet are hybrid machines with a modicum of engine noise, Google’s growing gaggle of 34 pod-like prototypes are all-electric machines that barely whisper their presence. Sometimes, a short toot of the horn is required to let people know they’re coming.
In its report, Google notes that for the past months engineers have programmed the car’s computer brain to understand which road situations might require a toot, sometimes discreet and sometimes determined.
“Our self-driving cars aim to be polite, considerate, and only honk when it makes driving safer for everyone,” the report says. “During testing, we taught our vehicles to distinguish between potentially tricky situations and false positives, i.e. the difference between a car facing the wrong way during a three-point turn, and one that’s about to drive down the wrong side of the road.”