Autonomous cars

Autonomous cars

In science, the word autonomous refers to an object that is able to independently decided and make decision based on the data received. People have the dreams and concepts to develop new vehicles to improve the future of transportation. I would say that the future of transportation is in the hands of the big companies developing self driving vehicles. Autopilot controls are not yet capable of functioning without humans being present but we are getting closer to it.

Companies and researchers are working together to make sure that autonomous cars meet that standards and are safe for the public to use. its predicted that we will have fully autonomous cars in the next decade which is getting the interest of investors and companies to invest their money into it. The technologies used in autonomous cars are improving by the end of this year the US will already have autonomous cars on the roads in LA and various tests have already been carried out to insure that the first commercial autonomous cars will succeed. The biggest autonomous car maker Waymo already has partnerships with Fiat-Chrysler, Lyft, and Avis.

Current generation of autonomous cars

Current autonomous cars have come a long way and the systems in them have improved marginally. every year they keep on getting better and better. The main pieces of hardware in autonomous cars include radar, GPS, video camera and sensors; they all work in sync to increase the performance. The information received by the car gets then processed in the microchip through vigorous algorithms. Autonomous cars can communicate with each other to eliminate the errors that humans would cause otherwise. The car can learn over time how pedestrians and other cars look like to improve decision making. The car scans the environment by using laser data which cannot be seen by humans, only computers. The technology has improved marginally, over 3m mile testing in done in simulators every day. 

Ford Motor Co has come up with a new self driving car. Ford has already partnered up with Argo AI and they are working on detailed maps that are necessary for autonomous cars. They are working hard to find a good business model to have self driving cars on the road by 2021. "This is, I think, the future of any automotive company or mobility company. If a majority of the world's population is going to be living in cities, we need to understand how to move those people around," said John Kwant, Ford's vice president of city solutions. Domino's is already testing their delivery cars in the US that are equipped with autonomous technology but still require a driver. Ford has also working with hiring service called Lyft to make develop autonomous cars together. Ford's engineers will work closely with Lift to build software that allows Ford's cars to communicate with Lifts app. Even though it's a great plan for two companies to work together and doing what they are best at, it wouldn't happen until 2021. Lyft is also working with a number other autonomous car makers including GM, Jaguar and NuTonomy.

Autonomous AI advantages

Over 181,384 casualties of all severities have been reported in 2016 and it was 3 percent lower a year before that. We can see a clear increase in road casualties which raises a concern. There aren't any published reports of autonomous car death accidents because they don't exist. It all can be decreased by having self-thinking cars on the roads as they have quicker reaction speed and make smarter decisions. Cars are programmed to react faster than humans which can be seen in Ford's new technology cars that monitor how you drive and then help when you're making a dangerous move on the road. Petrol and Diesel cars are known to emit poisonous gases and is environmentally dangerous which doesn't occur in electric cars. Petrol is pumped from the earth and the resource is limited which is affecting the price of petrol and the overall economy. We will never run out of electricity and we can always extract more more from the solar and wind electricity generators energy. It is estimated that we will have a fully autonomous cars and decreased cost of technology by 2030 but that hasn't stopped the investors to put their money in it. 

Autonomous cars and business

Between 2009 and 2015, Google spent around £1 billion to develop AI in their self driving car. Autonomous cars are still in the early stages and that's why investors and and big businesses are careful with the money. Autonomous cars market will get more and more competitive as the time goes on. Big technology companies, like Apple, Google and Tesla would most certainly dominate the market with their version of driverless cars. Waymo has been a long time leader when in comes to software in autonomous cars but they need a partner to actually manufacture the cars. In 2016 Google and Ford were working considering pairing up but Google declined due to cost issues displayed by Ford. The CEO of Tesla estimated that they will have self driving capabilities in their cars in less that 2 years. Autonomous cars will  increase the traffic flow.

Cyber security

Experts say that self driving cars will be vulnerable to cyber attacks. Driver assistant and self driving cars have different vulnerabilities. If the cars sensors rely on the computation in the cloud then that would open up a number of security holes. Any computer system that has an interface to the outside world can be hacked. Then again we would have to rely on the perception of sensors, something that would look like a stop sign to humans might be interpreted differently by the computer system in an autonomous car. Autonomous cars will continue to be a heated debate topic until the sceptics are proven wrong. Compared to normal vehicles that use mechanics, autonomous cars require a deep understanding of artificial intelligence and data mining which opens up opportunities for graduating students from Universities.

References

https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/7/16615290/waymo-self-driving-safety-driver-chandler-autonomous

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/features/how-do-driverless-cars-work/

https://spectrum.ieee.org/transportation/self-driving/the-big-problem-with-selfdriving-cars-is-people

https://www.scmagazineuk.com/the-future-of-connected-cars-overcoming-the-cyber-security-threat/article/671546/

https://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/self_driving_cars[1].pdf",

  year="2012

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-autonomous-cars-really-safer-than-human-drivers/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-autonomous-cars-really-safer-than-human-drivers/

https://phys.org/news/2018-02-ford-miami-bed-self-driving-cars.html

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR443-2.html