Google has several activities for Halloween. We’ve never actually gone to any of them, mainly because of the pain-in-the-neck factor. This year, however, the Self-Driving Car team invited kids in costume to come to Google[x] for “Trunk or Treat Data Collection” a few days before Halloween. We had no idea what that meant, but seeing that the effort is minimal to get there (walk across the street), we gathered up the kids’ costumes and headed over there on the Wednesday before Halloween.
It turned out to be a low key affair, just our kids and a handful of others. The objective was to teach the cars what kids in costumes look like, so the cars will know to be extra cautious. The kids’ objective was to get the candy waiting for them when they finished. Bruce’s objective was to show his coworkers how the Enderman head worked. Needless to say, the costumes were a big hit.
Here’s Ezra showing off the mechanics to three of Bruce’s colleagues.
At the end, the kids got to check out the inside of the car.
You can read Google’s explanation of the event here in their Google+ post. My favorite part of the post was the photo that went with it.
Here’s a screen shot of the Google post.
And my favorite part, the comments — one of which gives a shout out to the Enderman.
The story was picked up by a lot of news agencies. My Korean friend sent me a screen shot from a Korean publication.
Coincidentally, they were holding another event to announce Loon’s partnership with Indonesia and had inflated a Loon balloon on the grassy area below us. I snapped a few photos, of course.
Another crazy day in Mountain View. I have more photos and a couple of videos here.