The Autonomous Dream: A Reality Soon?
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Autonomous Driving is a trendy phrase in the world of technology today. This is because many attempts are being done to build autonomous things. It means these technologies have the ability to independently make decisions without outside control. Autonomy is the final goal for a lot of industries making intelligent devices. Today there exist numerous companies trying to build autonomous vehicles such as helicopters, airplanes and cars, on a large scale. The main aim is to eliminate the need of human influence in the functionality, yet perform to optimality.
Automobiles are one of the most common forms of transport used today. Therefore, building autonomous cars has been at the forefront of this noble idea. Autonomous vehicles make use of state-of-the-art sensors such as lidar, GPS, camera, and radar to collect data which is then fed to highly-trained algorithms that will intelligently make decisions.
Autonomous driving has gained a lot of traction in recent years. It has been touted that fully autonomous cars will be launched on our roads very soon. The exact year of roll-out keeps changing. These cars are being discussed as well in the context of safety. How smart will they be to assure not just the passengers, but also other road users of their safety? So far, the progress has been impressive; autonomous vehicles have been able to detect lanes, obstacles, road signs, and maneuver through corners. Under constant factors, they can be flawless, which unfortunately is hardly the case in real-life.
Based on the car’s speed and distance to an object on the road, the car has to make different critical decisions. In many situations, the environment is partially observable. Putting that in mind, a normal driver navigates with some assumptions about the right speed limit, how to break based on the terrain or surface, what part of the road can be safer for driving, etc, while ascribing to the road signs. But in the autonomous car domain, the equivalent of such pre-meditated assumptions is feeding relevant data into the model, complemented by complex algorithms. This will result in better decision-making.
The presence of different climatic and infrastructural conditions only serve to derail their progress to perfection. Vehicle sensors and cameras do not function to their best once the data collected is not good. When it comes to roads, autonomous vehicles should be able to adjust to specific road surfaces accordingly and detect in advance changes coming their way, so that they can adapt appropriately.
Highlight
At the core of Autonomous Driving is Computer Vision, a field of Artificial Intelligence.
““If you recognize that self-driving cars are going to prevent car accidents, AI will be responsible for reducing one of the leading causes of death in the world.” ” — Mark Zuckerberg
Safety will always influence the customer decision on which vehicle model to choose. Once a manufacturer can assure this, then the other business factors will find a way to tag along. Then comes the question: is it possible to guarantee one hundred percent safety? The simple answer is no. What can be done is to ensure that a vehicle functions properly, any mechanical problems present are easily detectable and can then be swiftly addressed. A lot of technologies have been integrated into today’s car to enhance its technical ability to support the driver when it comes to safety. Some vehicles will not allow the driver to start the engine, once they detect the driver’s physical condition is wanting. This includes being intoxicated, or totally exhausted.
The new technologies have indeed revolutionized vehicle safety to a higher level. But, despite all these, there still exist many road accidents that are totally blamed on human error. This is a good reason why autonomous driving should be pursued. Would it be safer, if vehicles on the road did not rely on direct human control? Since over 90 percent of road accidents are caused by human errors, then it is safe to say that with lesser direct human influence, the roads would be much better, safety-wise.
When autonomous vehicles will be designed to sublimity, the greatest achievement would be safety. While there will still be risks when machines lack flexibility, the rate of accidents would have been drastically reduced. The highest level of autonomous driving is when vehicles require no human interference to move along the route that they are expected, with very minimal to zero error. Special members of the society such as the disabled and the elderly will greatly benefit. This disruptive technology is anticipated to encourage car-sharing. The ripple effect of car-sharing is reducing the traffic on the roads as well as the amount of carbon-dioxide emission. The business model contemplated to be adopted is advertising by customizing content to every passenger. This should generate enough revenue to support the autonomous industry. With all these factors at stake, they motivate further research works on autonomous driving to continue.
““More data leads to better AI (artificial intelligence), more automation leads to greater efficiency, more usage leads to reduced cost, and more free time leads to greater productivity. All of these will grow into a mutually reinforcing virtuous circle that will continually and rapidly increase the adoption of AV (autonomous vehicles).” ” — Kai-Fu Lee, AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future
Conclusion
There are 6 stages of autonomous vehicles to be fully functional as expected. They are defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers as follows: Level 0 : No Automation, Level 1 : Driver Assistance, Level 2 : Partial Automation, Level 3 : Conditional Automation, Level 4 : High Automation, Level 5 : Full Automation. Today, we are at level 2. Mass production of self-driving vehicles is very expensive. This can be directly attributed to the high cost of sensors. Additionally, the data-intensive algorithms still need more refining to satisfaction, which is a very tedious process. Regulatory challenges cannot be overlooked because they vary from one country to another.
100 Billion Dollars has already been spent to achieve this goal. Unavoidably, sceptics are getting louder by day with doubts of ever really succeeding, with some voices coming from within the autonomous industry. Optimists are of the opinion that by 2030, all the levels would be achieved. Since this is not the first timeline set for complete deployment of autonomous vehicles, only time will tell. Also the fear of compromising our personal data still lingers. But most importantly, safety has to be guaranteed before proceeding with the other issues.