Being safer, less polluting and able to reduce congestion, self-driving cars are too appealing to governments and lawmakers to ignore, no matter how difficult the path is to getting there.
Vehicles today are equipped with hundreds of sensors, high-speed data connectivity and advanced driving assistance features. These features could be considered precursors to autonomous vehicles which are ushering in a transformative change in mobility.
An autonomous or a self-driving car is one that would drive itself to get from one place to another through the use of technology such as sensors, radars, lidars, GPS, cameras, driving assistance systems, and navigation data. Such vehicles have the potential to completely transform mobility as we know it and several OEMs, technology companies, academia and governments (in developed markets) are coming together to explore possibilities in this space. Google has been a pioneer in this field with its selfdriving project ‘Waymo’, and has tied up with a number of automakers and suppliers to help translate its vision. A good number of carmakers too have also unveiled prototypes of driverless cars.
EVOLUTION OF AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE TECH
Evolution of self-driven cars will happen in stages as it is dependent on both technology and infrastructure. The infrastructure itself needs to scale up to accommodate these changes and parallel research areas (like platooning, active safety, pedestrian collision avoidance) should also evolve before the potential of autonomous vehicles can be completely unlocked.
Automotive OEMs have forayed into this journey through introduction of semi-autonomous technologies such as adaptive cruise control with traffic awareness, automatic steering/braking and lane assistance. The key to delivering completely autonomous capability will be the integration of all these technologies to ensure that the vehicle detects road characteristics, traffic and even human behaviour, and responds accordingly.
This story is from the June 15 2017 edition of Autocar Professional.
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This story is from the June 15 2017 edition of Autocar Professional.
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