What will happen in the future? Driver, is it valid in 2022?


Self-driving car prototype has no steering wheel, brake or accelerator pedals. So how safe is it, and what is it like on the road? The future trend of car/lorry is driverless is unveiled a brand new self-driving car prototype on Tuesday; the first company to build a car with no a steering wheel, accelerator or brake pedal.

The car's arrival marks the next stage in self-driving car project, which was born from the Darpa Grand Challenges for robotic vehicles in the early 2000s. Kick started its own self-driving car project in 2008, and it has been rumbling on ever since, first with modified Toyota Prius and then with customized Lexus SUVs, which took the car’s existing sensors, such as the cruise-control cameras, and added a spinning laser scanner on the top.

self-driving car taking a spin around a car park.

It is the first truly driverless electric car prototype built to test the next stage of its five-year-old self-driving car project. It looks like a cross between a Smart car and a Nissan Micra, with two seats and room enough for a small amount of luggage.

It is the first real physical incarnation of vision of what a self-driving car of the near future could be. It operates in and around California, primarily around the Mountain View area where Google has its headquarters.

It ferries two people from one place to another without any user interaction. The car is summoned by a smartphone for pick up at the user’s location with the destination set. There is no steering wheel or manual control, simply a start button and a big red emergency stop button. In front of the passengers there is a small screen showing the weather, the current speed and a small countdown animation to launch.

Once the journey is done, the small screen displays a message to remind you to take your personal belongings – reinforcing that this is not aiming to be a substitute for your personal car at the moment, but more as a replacement for the taxi without the human driver.

The go button right next to the big red emergency stop button, just in case.

Very few people outside have been allowed to ride in the new car. Most of the people depicted in promotional videos for the new car described the experience as “smooth” and “nothing that feels the least bit threatening”.

Kara Swisher and Liz Gannes from technology site Recode were one of the few independent test riders, who described the car as having “ample” room despite being small, likely due to the lack of the normal controls taking up space in the cabin, and "that this felt a lot like a theme park ride".

Designed the car from scratch, starting with the sensors and a frame to interconnect them, then adding a cabin that does not block any of the sensors or create blind spots and eventually the body shell. The manufacturing of the 100 or so prototype cars will be done by a firm in the Detroit area, but declined to comment on which.

How does it work? Powered by an electric motor with around a 100 mile range, the car uses a combination of sensors and software to locate itself in the real world combined with highly accurate digital maps. A GPS is used, just like the satellite navigation systems in most cars, to get a rough location of the car, at which point radar, lasers and cameras take over to monitor the world around the car, 360-degrees.

The software can recognize objects, people, cars, road marking, signs and traffic lights, obeying the rules of the road and allowing for multiple unpredictable hazards, including cyclists. It can even detect road orks and safely navigate around them.

self-driving car being built in Detroit.

The new prototype has more sensors fitted to it that can see further (up to 600 feet in all directions) and in greater detail than the ones available on the previous repurposed Lexus and Toyota vehicles.

Safety for driverless are the new car is the next evolution of self-driving car. While the new frame is untested, the company’s previous versions have clocked up over 700,000 miles of testing on public roads, mainly around California, including over 1,000 miles of driving in the most complex situations and cities like San Francisco’s hills and busy streets.

The car itself is limited to 25 mph, which restricts it to certain roads, but also minimizes the kinetic energy it could carry into a crash if one should happen. The front of the car is also made to be as kind to pedestrians as possible with a foam bumper and a flexible windscreen that is designed to absorb energy from an impact with a person’s body.

Seat belts are also provided – a safety requirement for vehicles on the road – while the car has redundant systems, a “fault-tolerant architecture” as calls it, for both steering and braking, should the primary systems fails; plus that emergency stop button that passengers can hit at any time.

Self-driving car has also taken the data and behaviors it learned from its previous vehicles to create a defensive, considerate driving style that is meant to protect both the passengers and other road users. For instance, the car will wait a second after the traffic lights turn green before it moves off, although this could incur the anger of drivers stuck behind it.

Self-driving car also says that making it drive in a natural and predictable way has been one of the key goals, so that it behaves in a familiar way on the road for other drivers.

A laser sensor on the roof constantly scans the surroundings.

Now has gone as far as it can with the current customized vehicles and that a new platform is needed to take the project and technology to the next step and closer to a product people can actually use.

For instance, the previous generation Lexus vehicle had blind spots right up against the car where the sensors couldn’t see, something that needs to be eliminated in any vehicle open to the public.

The cars will first be used to test the software driving the car and push its capabilities. Says at some point, when it deems its software safe, it will start putting real people into the cars beyond Google engineers. It will use the cars in a similar manner to the company’s Google Glass explorer programme, analyzing how people use them and what works and what doesn’t.

Designed of the car’s cute looks and friendly “face” were created intentionally to be “very Googley” according to its designers, to put both other road users and passengers at ease with the new technology. The shell is also designed to give the sensors the best view of the surroundings.

The car on the inside, the new car has two traditional car seats, primarily because in this iteration passengers have to be strapped in like they would in any other car to meet safety regulations, which means using standard seat belts. It also provides a more familiar passenger experience, which at this stage is likely important to aid adoption.

The What will happen when no driver in year 2022? Who will drive?    

Driverless cars are a transformative technology that could have important implications for society, national security, the economy, and the environment. On May 8, the Center for Technology Innovation and the U.S. Department of State hosted a panel of experts to discuss the potential for driverless cars domestically and abroad. The potential benefits of autonomous vehicles are exciting but innovators and government officials must first overcome several barriers to change.

A driverless car (sometimes called a self-driving car, an automated car or an autonomous vehicle) is a robotic vehicle that is designed to travel between destinations without a human operator. To qualify as fully autonomous, a vehicle must be able to navigate without human intervention to a predetermined destination over roads that have not been adapted for its use.

Companies developing and/or testing driverless cars include Audi, BMW, Ford, Google, General Motors, Volkswagen and Volvo. Driverless test involved a fleet of self-driving cars -- six Toyota Prii and an Audi TT -- navigating over 140,000 miles of California streets and highways. A single accident occurred during one of the infrequent occasions when a human was driving. Another test of over 1000 miles was completed successfully with no human intervention. 

Here’s how the future trend of car/lorry is driverless work:

Ø  The “driver” sets a destination. The car’s software calculates a route and starts the car on its way.

Ø  A rotating, roof-mounted LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging - a technology similar to radar) sensor monitors a 60-meter range around the car and creates a dynamic 3-D  map of the car’s current environment.

Ø  A sensor on the left rear wheel monitors sideways movement to detect the car’s position relative to the 3-D map.

Ø  Radar systems in the front and rear bumpers calculate distances to obstacles.

Ø  Artificial intelligence (AI) software in the car is connected to all the sensors and has input from Google Street View and video cameras inside the car.

Ø  The AI simulates human perceptual and decision-making processes and controls actions in driver-control systems such as steering and brakes.

Ø  The car’s software consults Google Maps for advance notice of things like landmarks and traffic signs and lights.

Ø  An override function is available to allow a human to take control of the vehicle.

Proponents of systems based on driverless cars say they would eliminate accidents caused by driver error, which is currently the cause of almost all traffic accidents. Furthermore, the greater precision of an automatic system could improve traffic flow, dramatically increase highway capacity and reduce or eliminate traffic jams. Finally, the systems would allow commuters to do other things while traveling, such as working, reading or sleeping.

There is no generally accepted definition of a driverless car. The phrase connotes a car with total autonomy. Cars today already include automated technologies including anti-lock brakes, cruise control, lane assist, and active parking assist. There is no bright line for the number of automatic features a car must have before it may be described as “driverless.”

Conclusion

In conclusion, upon addressing the mechanics of the driverless car as well as its benefits and potential issues, it is quite interesting to see how the world will actually become by the year 2022. Will the rite of passage of attaining one’s driver license cease to exist? It is truly in the reader’s discretion to determine and weigh the impacts that the driverless car will have on society in the future. Until then, it is fascinating to see the effects this creation will have on the states in which it is legalized as well as on the people that have chosen to experiment with it.

The future of the driverless car. How is it possible

What seemed fiction science just a decade ago is now becoming a reality. Now we have AI presented in several industries, going from smartphones to military. And in this last one AI has many uses. For example, now you can find companies developing AI systems in order to assist with rescue missions. And AI is also becoming important in the automotive industry. Now these driverless cars can ‘learn’ about their environment, and therefore drive without problems, like a normal human being would do. And some agree that in a time, once these AI-powered systems get better, these cars will be able to drive even better than a normal human being. The future is here.

AI won’t stop and the advances are getting better and better with the pass of the time. Which means that these cars won’t have any problem learning from their environment, in order to drive better with the pass of the time. Explaining how these systems work is kind of complicate. Because they use very complex systems and protocols in order to interact with their environment. They have to analyze tons of data and process it, and based on it make decisions. And the thing here is that these are not pre-defined actions, the system has to learn by itself, hence it’s called artificial intelligence, because it needs to mimic the way a human thinks… or do it even better.

Now, the thing with driverless cars is that people will have to look for new things to do when getting from one point to another. As they won’t have to drive any longer, because the car itself will take care of the job, it’s almost guaranteed that a market of entertainment will flourish. We can already see, in the future, that tons of apps will be launched. Because people will want to do Something when in the car. Therefore many companies will want to profit on this by creating a good experience for people who use a driverless car. As you can see there’s plenty of money to be made here.

The future of mobility. What's next??

1) Incremental change:

This vision of the future sees private ownership remaining the norm as consumers opt for the forms of privacy, flexibility, security, and convenience that come with owning a vehicle. While incorporating driver-assist technologies, this future state assumes that fully autonomous drive doesn’t completely displace driver-controlled vehicles anytime soon.

2) A world of carsharing:

 The second future state anticipates continued growth of shared access to vehicles through ridesharing and car sharing. Economic scale and increased competition drive the expansion of shared vehicle services into new geographic territories and more specialized customer segments. As shared mobility serves a greater proportion of local transportation needs, multivehicle households can begin reducing the number of cars they own, while others may eventually abandon ownership altogether.

3) The driverless revolution:

 The third state is one in which autonomous drive technology* proves viable, safe, convenient, and economical, yet private ownership continues to prevail. Drivers still prefer owning their own vehicles but seek driverless functionality for its safety and convenience. This future will see a proliferation of highly customized, personalized vehicles catering to families or individuals with specific needs.

4) A new age of autonomy: 

The fourth future state anticipates a convergence of both the autonomous and vehicle sharing trends. Mobility management companies and fleet operators offer a range of passenger experiences to meet widely varied needs at differentiated price points. Taking off first in urban areas but spreading to the suburbs, this future state provides seamless mobility.

THE FUTURE TREND OF CAR/LORRY IS DRIVELESS. WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN YEAR 2022?

The disadvantages of driverless cars and lorriese

• Cybersecurity

We already know that in case for the vehicles to move, it must work with the system and the system itself is connected to the network and computer. So, the possibilities for the computer system to be hacked is quite high. So, it is possible to create some safeguards against ‘car hacks’. For example, a car that collects a small amount of data by itself for operation and then deletes it after use will be more difficult to attack. We must take a safety action to avoid this problem to occur and might affect our life in the future.

•  Liability

Let say that the accident occur. It is difficult or unclear to find if an autonomous car seriously injures another person. Due to the error or bad weather, it is even more complicated to choose who is more responsible and the computer must choose between two different accidents. Programming in those situations is fraught with ethical and legal conundrums.

•   Sensors fail during unexpected conditions

As we know the weather can change unexpectedly and beyond our control. Autonomous vehicles rely heavily on their sensors, making them vulnerable to sensor failures in unfamiliar situation. The sensor is the important thing in this autonomous vehicle as the move based on the sensor. Just imagine if the sensor can’t be function well, it might cause a problem such as an accident because the vehicles lost it’s control. The situation that can affect the sensor are drastic weather conditions, human traffic signals and roadblocks and local traffic laws.

•   The vehicles will be too expensive

The cost of producing this vehicle is quite high. So it will affect the price of the whole vehicle. This is because, in order to produce the vehicle it need sensors, new software and modified vehicle parts for example computer system.