Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) says it has put together the technology necessary for cars to drive themselves, and has logged more than 140,000 miles on the road so far. The modified Toyota Priuses and one Audi TT come armed with "video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder" to help the vehicles navigate. And yes, Google's data centers are used to crunch the enormous amount of data obtained when pre-mapping the routes. For safety reasons, Google says the cars are, for now, manned by a trained operator and a Google software engineer rides in the passenger seat.

The ambitious project is part of Google's plan to help create the new "highway trains of tomorrow," according to a blog post by Google Distinguished Engineer Sebastian Thrun, who is also the director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. The objective is to reduce the number of road traffic accidents that see an estimated 1.2 million lives lost each year. In addition, Google wants to increase efficiency by freeing up drivers to do more productive tasks during their daily commute--estimated by the Transportation Department to average 52 minutes each working day.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at The Official Google Blog
- check out this article at eWeek

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