Imagine this situation. You're stuck in traffic and some nervous drivers behind you are constantly honking their horns, even though they have nowhere to go. You turn around and realize with horror that the car behind you has no driver. The car is becoming an annoyance in itself!
Hopefully, that scenario won't happen anytime soon. But the plan for it is already here, as Google has started teaching its self-driving cars how to honk! The news comes from the Self-Driving Car Project Monthly Report, and was first spotted by Business Insider.
In the report, Google explains how self-honking cars, in theory at least, will be much more polite and discreet than human drivers. “Our self-driving software is designed to recognize when honking might alert other drivers to our presence – for example, when a driver starts to merge into our lane or reverses from a blind alley,” the report says.
To make sure its cars only honk when absolutely necessary, Google teaches the cars' software to distinguish between real situations that require honking and false alarms. Every time the car honks when it shouldn't, Google's test drivers note it so that the bug can be eliminated in the next iteration of the car's software.
Google has gone so far as to teach the cars different types of honks depending on the scenario: two short honks if a car in front is backing up into the Google car, and a longer honk for more urgent situations.
In the report, Google also describes how it designed the sound of these cars (compared to gasoline-powered cars, electric cars are very quiet, so manufacturers added a sound signature that lets pedestrians and cyclists know that the car is nearby). Google says it tried to make the sound “friendly and a little futuristic.” To find the perfect sound, the company experimented with many different sounds, including those produced by an orca whale!
