What is on top of this Prius?

This looks like a LIDAR system, which is essentially a laser based radar system. Given the other instrumentation, I suspect this Prius is part of an auto-driving research study.

Tom

 

could be a new gen google street view car ... the ones i have seen tho have a bigger / higer camera mount ...

 

Tom is right. It's the auto-drive device, but if you look closely into the module you can see a little alien controlling the car, a la Men In Black.

 

Google self-driving car:
Google’s Self-Driving Car Spotted On The Highway Almost A Year Ago (Oh, And Scoble) [Video]

 

It's evpv's new camera designed to catch SUA.

 

That's the Google's driverless car

Google Street View car looks like this

 

aren't they afaraid it'll take off and crash all their expensive equipment?

 

I just got one from ebay J/K
I saw that a while ago, its a very cool and inovative idea.

 

Any bets on whether it has an internal camera trained on the pedals

 

More info at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/science/10google.html. If you can't read the whole article, do a Google search for "Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic".

 

We've seen three of them in a row going up Highway 50... if they follow the lanes by the stripes
/lane divider lines then they are a better driver than most I have to commute with... especially considering the lines are all screwed up and don't point correctly.

 

Yep . . . I saw one of these driverless rides down in the San diego area maybe 3 or 4 years ago:



Lot of Junk, in the trunk, too:



one servo goes out, and you kiss it good bye.

.

 

The pedals are driven by servos, as is the steering wheel. These inputs have sensors to detect human input - if you take control of the wheel, brake or accelerator, the AI hands control over to the human in the driver seat.

I've actually been in the older model - here's a shot I took from the passenger seat.

 

That looks like a VW emblem on the steering wheel. :huh:

 

Perhaps it's the Passat Wagon at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge_%282007%29#Race_Participants_.26_Results ? Stanford's team was headed up by Sebastian Thrun who is now doing this work for Google. Here's a blog entry from him: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/what-were-driving-at.html.