Self-Driving Cars: A Glance at Future Transportation

In Sci-Fi movies like Batman, Minority Report, Geostorm, and Upgrade we often see self-driving cars. They seem like sci-fi or future technology but they are not fiction anymore. We’re seeing autonomous cars in movies since 1971. But the first truly autonomous cars appeared in the 1980s, with Carnegie Mellon University’s Navlab and ALV projects funded by DARPA starting in 1984 and Mercedes-Benz and Bundeswehr University Munich’s EUREKA Prometheus Project in 1987.

Self-driving vehicles are vehicles that don’t require a human driver to safely operate vehicles. They use the sensors to navigate through the environment.

Manufacturing a vehicle that can move seems an easy task, it’s the world around it that causes all the problems. For a system based on artificial intelligence, it is difficult to predict the chaotic and unpredictable behavior of the average human. And here we’re talking about a car driving on its own into streets full of people and other cars.

For this purpose, we use sensors. Uber’s self-driving prototypes use sixty-four laser beams, along with other sensors, to construct their internal map. Google’s prototypes use lasers, radar, high-powered cameras, and sonar. The software then processes those inputs from sensors, plots a path, and sends instructions to the vehicle’s actuators, which control acceleration, braking, and steering. Hard-coded rules, obstacle avoidance algorithms, predictive modeling, and “smart” object discrimination help the software follow traffic rules and navigate obstacles.

It’s our fundamental belief that autonomous technology will lead to better safety on the roads.

Dan Ammann, GM President

Automotive Manufacturers know that Self-Driving cars are the future of transportation so, they are investing billions in this revolutionary technology. Uber just received an investment of $1bn from Toyota Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. Waymo just signed a partnership with Renault and Nissan to bring Self-Driving cars to the market.

1.35 million people died in 2016 in road accidents. 94% of crashes involve human choice or error. This can be prevented if we have Self-Driven Cars. This system can also help millions of blind and old people to drive their own cars.