One element that's almost common-place in most Sci-fi movies are the fully-automated cars capable of driving themselves (via a sort of auto-pilot mode), and it seems that the future might be closer than we believed, because none other than search-engine giant Google is actually working quite seriously on developing a system that will allow vehicles to drive themselves.

So, as Google informs us via their blog, the company's been working hard at developing the technology required for cars to actually “drive themselves”, and it seems that they've actually managed to achieve quite an OK level of success, the prototype Prius models created by the company driving without any significant incidents for over 140,000 miles thus far.

As expected, the self-driving cars from Google feature very advanced sensory technology, including video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to “see” other traffic, as well as detailed maps (Google Maps, of course) to navigate the road ahead.

Naturally, computing the huge amount of data provided by the sensors offering results in real time is not an easy task, but it's easily achieved with the help of Google’s data centers.

The search engine giant goes on to say that, in order to develop this advanced technology, they have gathered some of the very best engineers from the DARPA Challenges, a series of autonomous vehicle races organized by the U.S. Government.

As expected, for safety reasons, despite of the fact that the cars do drive themselves, that doesn't mean that they're completely unmanned.

No, in fact a trained safety driver is always behind the wheel, being able to easily take over should something go bad, while a trained software operator in the passenger seat to monitor the software.

Any test begins by sending out a driver in a conventionally driven car to map the route and road conditions.

By mapping features like lane markers and traffic signs, the software in the car becomes familiar with the environment and its characteristics in advance.

Plus, Google also claims that local police has been fully briefed on their work.

Of course, a fully-functional, standardized technology for self-driving cars is still a few years away (even Google estimates that the 2018 – 2020 interval is a very optimistic one), but nevertheless, it's very nice to see that we're heading in this direction, with the “future” getting closer and closer to “present time”.