The self-honking horn for the self-driving car is ready for its test drive. Well, almost. Google announced in its latest monthly report on the company’s self-driving car program. It says that its engineers are teaching the cars how to honk in a variety of situations.
The engineers at Google X working on the self-honking project (motto: We Give a Beep!) say it’s a complicated exercise in decision-making and evaluating the appropriateness of various warning sounds.
The engineers say their goal is to teach the cars to respond like experienced but tolerant drivers. They first tested the self-honkers by blasting the horn inside the self-driving car only, so riders with nothing else to do could monitor the situations and effectiveness of the horn software’s responses. Horn-worthy situations included seeing a car blindly backing out of a driveway, a vehicle going the wrong way down a one-way street and a car just backing up slightly to make room for a pedestrian crossing.
Google is currently testing a fleet of 24 Lexus RX450h SUVs and 34 of those pod-shaped cars on public roads in California and three other states.
Well, the self-honking car horn of the self driving car is still a work in progress that is looking to break records soon.