Autonomous vehicle. Photo/courtesy.
Autonomous vehicles are rapidly evolving with different types of production emerging in the market. They are commonly known as self-driving cars equipped with technology enabling it to operate without drivers.
According to the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), autonomous vehicles have 6 levels of intervention with only 4 levels achieved as of 2024. The experiments on the 4th level series have been done on different brands like Waymo in San Francisco which majorly operate in robotaxi services, Cruise, and Baidu Apollo respectively.
The level 4 automation with full self-driving features available to consumers are systems such as Super Cruise, Ford Motor, BlueCruise and Tesla’s, all robotaxi and semi-truck technology.
The level 5 series remains a long-term goal and has not been implemented anywhere due to technical and regulatory challenges.
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Driver assistant technology depends on sensors to gather data on their surroundings and other supporting technologies on which network patterns are fed to machines in order to effectively operate. It includes combinations of cameras, LiDAR, radar, audio, ultrasound, GPS and IMU are used to analyze inputs from these sensors to detect and identify objects. Some of the features have AI playing a major role in modification of Autonomous driving.
The AI system determines the appropriate time to slow down and stop by planning routes and doing prediction and object sensors.It also enhances the general communication including the passenger communication with the set system.
With all these inventions, autonomous vehicles are designed to curb major challenges like traffic congestion and road safety by reducing accident cases as human error will be eliminated from the system when full automation is achieved.
Many predict widespread adoption in the next decade for a better environment.
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