How Google's driverless car learned to see bikes

If you ever wondered how Google's self-driving car can tell drivers apart from cyclists and other users of the road, the company's latest report on the project should shed a bit of light on the topic. It turns out that (as with many of the company's products) machine learning algorithms figure heavily into the car's detection technology. By "seeing" many examples of bicycles with its cameras and sensors, the car's computer has effectively been taught what bicycles look like from every angle. "Our software learns from the thousands of variations it has seen -- from multicolored frames, big wheels, bikes with car seats, tandem bikes, conference bikes, and unicycles," Google said in its report, published Tuesday. Haven't heard of some of the bicycle types mentioned on that list?