Over The River And Through The Woods To Grandmothers House We Go The Horse Knows The Way To Carry The Sleigh Through White And Drifted Snow
Traditional lyrics
Sketch of a pre-programmed clockwork cart by Leonardo Da Vinci, circa 1478 Had it been built, this cart would have been powered by large coiled clockwork springs, propelling it over 130 feet. The clever control mechanism could have taken the vehicle through a predetermined course. Credit: Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, Italy / De Agostini Picture Library / Metis e Mida Informatica / Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana / The Bridgeman Art Library
Draft animals and distracted pedestrians can usually keep to a path on their own. But with the first self-propelled vehicles came the need to have an alert human guide the craft at every moment, or risk disaster. The modern experience of driving was born that peculiar mix of anxiety, alertness, and boredom.
Sailboats were likely the first self-propelled vehicles, and possibly the first to have some form of automated steering, the auto-tiller. This device uses ropes to connect something like a weathervane to the boats tiller, so that the craft stays on course even with shifting winds.
The first widely used motorized vehicles were steamboats and trains. The latter adopted their guiding tracks more to support their huge weight than for directional control, but tracks serve both ends. Just a decade or so after its invention, the airplane got its first autopilot.
What Do You Think
If a self-driving car was waiting outside your door today, where would you go? On a pleasure tour of the countryside, or to your next chore? If you have some distance to travel, perhaps youd like your car to join a high speed road train, a convoy that would save on gas and road space as it whisked you to your destination at over 100 mph.
How would you while away the minutes or hours as you drove? Maybe youd watch a movie on a flat panel TV while sipping a cold drink, or surf the Web or chat on video, or stretch out for a luxurious nap. A few years from now, you might be able to order a lovely snack with voice commands and have it delivered piping hot by a drone that could match speed with your car to transfer your order.
You can use the comments section of this blog to add your thoughts.
No Hands Across America
In the early 1990s, Carnegie Mellon researcher Dean Pomerleau wrote a Ph.D. thesis describing how neural networks could allow a self-driving vehicle to take in raw images from the road and output steering controls in real time. Pomerleau wasnt the only researcher working on self-driving cars, but his use of neural nets proved way more efficient than alternative attempts to manually divide images into road and non-road categories.
In 1995, Pomerleau and fellow researcher Todd Jochem took their Navlab self-driving car system on the road. Their bare-bones autonomous minivan traveled 2,797 miles coast-to-coast from Pittsburgh to San Diego in a journey the pair dubbed No Hands Across America.
Also Check: How Much Can I Sell My Car For
The First Autonomous Car Fatality
Claims that self-driving technology is safer than human drivers were called into question when one of Ubers Volvo XC90-based prototypes hit and killed 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg as she crossed a street in Arizona. Although she was jaywalking, the crash was deemed entirely avoidable. Police officers concluded Ubers safety driver was watching Hulu until half a second before the impact.
The Impact On Insurance
Some aspects of insurance will be impacted as autonomous cars become the norm. There will still be a need for liability coverage, but over time the coverage could change, as manufacturers and suppliers and possibly even municipalities are called upon to take responsibility for what went wrong.
Product liability laws might incorporate the concept of cost-benefit analysis to mitigate the cost to manufacturers of claims, according to a 2014 RAND report. Coverage for physical damage due to a crash and for losses not caused by crashes but by wind, floods and other natural elements and by theft is less likely to change but may become cheaper if the potentially higher costs to repair or replace damaged vehicles is more than offset by the lower accident frequency rate.
The number of vehicle-related workers compensation claims should drop as will the share of healthcare and disability insurance costs related to auto accidents.
Underwriting: Initially, many of the traditional underwriting criteria, such as the number and kind of accidents an applicant has had, the miles he or she expects to drive and where the car is garaged, will still apply, but the make, model and style of car may assume a greater importance. The implications of where a car is garaged and driven might be different if there are areas set aside, such as dedicated lanes, for automated driving.
Also Check: How Does The Electric Car Tax Credit Work
Is Level 5 Autonomy Possible
Level 5 cars wont even have steering wheels or acceleration/braking pedals. They will be free from geofencing, able to go anywhere and do anything that an experienced human driver can do. Fully autonomous cars are undergoing testing in several pockets of the world, but none are yet available to the general public.
Self Driving Uber Car That Hit And Killed Woman Did Not Recognize That Pedestrians Jaywalk
At last count, Google cars have driven more than two million kilometers in their four test cities. There are currently 24 Lexus SUVs on the road and 34 cars that cover up to 26,000 miles per week. But after seven years of work, there is still talk of when the car will be launched on the market, while Googles competitors such as Uber and Tesla have already presented their cars to the public. One reason could be Alphabet CEO Larry Pages insistence on a car that is fully autonomous rather than part of itself.
Recommended Reading: Does Liability Insurance Cover My Car If Someone Hits Me
First Wave Navigation Systems And The Darpa Challenge
The first wave focused on exploitation of the emerging navigation technology, namely Global Positioning System and Inertial Measurement Units , developed around the turn of the century. With GPS, autonomous driving systems could determine the cars position within one meter while this was an incredible achievement, it was not sufficient for precise driving and navigation in road traffic. This was improved with the introduction of IMUs, which measure the acceleration forces within the car and which increased the accuracy of the GPS navigation to up to 5 cm.
Open challenges and large competitions are essential factors for further innovations in many research areas for example, the ILSVRC challenge intended to spur the development and research of image recognition techniques. The equivalent in the autonomous driving domain was the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Grand Challenge in 2004. The first competition took place in the Mojave Desert region of the USA, and the task was to navigate through a 150-mile route. A prize of one million dollars was offered for first place however, none of the participating teams finished the route. The farthest distance was travelled by CMUs Humvee, completing only 7.32 miles before getting hung up on a rock after making a switchback turn. Therefore, a second DARPA Grand Challenge was scheduled for the following year this time, five teams managed to finish the route autonomously to the end.
The Driverless Dream Begins
It didnt take long after the birth of the automobile for inventors to start thinking about autonomous vehicles. In 1925, inventor Francis Houdina demonstrated a radio-controlled car, which he drove through the streets of Manhattan without anyone at the steering wheel. According to a period New York Times report, the radio-controlled vehicle was able to start its engine, shift gears, and sound its horn as if a phantom hand were at the wheel.
As an amusing aside, Houdinas name sounded sufficiently like that of the famous escape artist and illusionist Harry Houdini that a lot of people thought this was Houdinis latest trick. Houdini visited the Houdina Company and got into a physical altercation, during which he broke an electric chandelier.
You May Like: How To Register A Car In California
Promising Future For Robotaxis Robo
Now after a decade and some bumpy starts, it’s robotaxis, robot-driven deliveries, and autonomous trucks that are emerging as the most promising money-makers in the market.
“Ride-hailing is a lousy business model with unhappy human drivers and urban mobility problems. The next great thing could be fleets of robotaxis,” said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan where he focuses on entrepreneurship and technology. He envisions urban streets without accidents, honking, traffic jams, and dedicated lanes for self-driving vehicles.
In this next phase of passengers and road testing, the technical complexities are growing with unpredictable traffic patterns and weather factors such as fog and rain, plus lingering social awareness and acceptance issues.
“It will still require a significant amount of time for autonomous driving to be commercialized on a large scale,” said Dong Wei, vice president and chief safety operation officer of Baidu Intelligent Driving Business Group in Beijing.
Paid passenger fares in fully driverless robotaxis could be the next step toward the commercial development of this transformative market.
-acquired start-up Zoox, which has plans to offer on-demand autonomous transportation in urban settings, is testing its fleet of Toyota Highlanders outfitted with sensors and safety drivers in the Bay Area, Seattle, and Las Vegas.
Automated Safety Features Available Now
A 2015 study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has found that improvements in design and safety technology have led to a lower fatality rate in accidents involving late model cars. The likelihood of a driver dying in a crash of a late model vehicle fell by more than a third over three years, and nine car models had zero fatalities per million registered vehicles. Part of the reason for the lower fatality rate might also have resulted from the weak economy, which led to reduced driving, the IIHS said.
The study, which looked at fatalities involving 2011 model year cars over a year of operation, found that there was an average of 28 driver deaths per million vehicle car years through 2012, down from 48 deaths for 2008 model cars through 2009. Eight years ago, there were no models with a zero death-rate.
The IIHS attributed the lower death rate to the adoption of electronic stability control, which has reduced the risk of rollovers, and to side airbags and structural changes that improve occupant safety. However, the IIHS said, there was a wide gap between the safest and the least safe models, with the riskiest cars mostly small lower cost models.
Data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and Highway Loss Data Institute already show a reduction in property damage liability and collision claims for cars equipped with forward-collision warning systems, especially those with automatic braking. The exact percentage varied depending on the car manufacturer.
You May Like: Can I Recharge My Car Ac Myself
The History And Evolution Of Self
The idea of self-driving cars or autonomous vehicles has captured human imagination since the 1930s and with the 2020 slated deadline to put self-driving cars on the streets of major cities in the US and other developed countries, stakes and motivation are definitely high.
It was at Carnegie Mellon University that the first truly autonomous cars appeared however, it was DARPAs self-driving cars competition of 2004, 2005 and 2007 that really kick-started the race to create road-worthy autonomous vehicles. DARPAs challenge to university students and private contractors on developing self-driving cars helped pave the way for a safer and eco-friendly future. This new path is unavoidable and works hand-in-hand to humanitys destiny.
As early as 2014, Tesla Motors had already implemented its Autopilot technology to its electric vehicles and the safety record it has achieved is astounding, to say the least. The cameras and ultrasonic sensors have successfully predicted collisions with up to 76% accuracy and were able to prevent them with over 90% success rate.
The Autonomous Vehicle Concept
Of course, it took over 60 years before robotic vehicles started cruising our streets, but theyre not as plentiful as General Motors imagined them to be and they didnt even need to create the automated highway system. However, the goal to develop full-fledged autonomous vehicles is gaining traction with the goal of making driving efficient and safe.
Benefits of Self-Driving Vehicles
Can You Drink And Drive Tesla
You can still get a DUI with Tesla Autopilot
Its still illegal to drive while intoxicated, even with Autopilot. Just as with any other car, you must be sober enough to drive it. The risk of driving under the influence is serious, not just for you and your passengers, but for other motorists on the road.
Also Check: How To Fix Crease Dent In Car
Terminology And Safety Considerations
Modern vehicles provide features such as keeping the car within its lane, speed controls, or emergency braking. Those features alone are just considered as driver assistance technologies because they still require a human driver control while fully automated vehicles drive themselves without human driver input.
According to Fortune, some newer vehicles’ technology namesâsuch as AutonoDrive, PilotAssist, Full-Self Driving or DrivePilotâmight confuse the driver, who may believe no driver input is expected when in fact the driver needs to remain involved in the driving task. According to the BBC, confusion between those concepts leads to deaths.
For this reason, some organizations such as the AAA try to provide standardized naming conventions for features such as ALKS which aim to have capacity to manage the driving task, but which are not yet approved to be an automated vehicles in any countries. The Association of British Insurers considers the usage of the word autonomous in marketing for modern cars to be dangerous because car ads make motorists think “autonomous” and “autopilot” mean a vehicle can drive itself when they still rely on the driver to ensure safety. Technology able to drive a car is still in its beta stage.
According to the SMMT, “There are two clear states â a vehicle is either assisted with a driver being supported by technology or automated where the technology is effectively and safely replacing the driver.”
Google Enters The Race
In 2010, internet giant announced that some of its employees had spent the previous year secretly developing and testing a system for a self-driving car in the hopes of finding a solution that would reduce the number of car accidents each year by half. The project was headed by Sebastian Thrun, director of Stanfords Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and brought onboard engineers who worked on cars that competed in DARPAs Challenge events. The goal was to launch a commercial vehicle by the year 2020.
The team started out with seven prototypes, six Toyota Priuses and an Audi TT, which were souped up with an array of sensors, cameras, lasers, a special radar and GPS technology that allowed them to do much more than just circumnavigate a pre-determined route. The system can detect objects such as people and numerous potential hazards up to hundreds of yards away. By 2015, Google cars had logged more than 1 million miles without causing an accident, though they were involved in 13 collisions. The first accident for which the car was at fault occurred in 2016.
Also Check: How To Program A Car Computer With A Laptop
Second Wave Tech Giants Join The Battle
Over the years, the quality of sensors used in the vehicles improved drastically, and vision-based systems became more and more popular. Around 2006, better LIDAR systems were developed, camera systems improved significantly, and first methods for precise 3D reconstructions were introduced, which helped with recognising and locating obstacles. These technologies significantly advanced the research of autonomous driving, and soon, large tech companies entered the field. For example, in 2009, Google began secretly developing their prototype called Waymo. By 2015, they reported an investment of $1 billion into the research and development. Recently, they also published a large-scale reconstruction of San Francisco from 2.8 million photos using a technique based on Neural Radiance Fields ¹¹. Compared to the previous methods in large-scale reconstruction, Waymo achieved superb results.
Billions Bet By Us And Asian Auto Tech Giants
Chasing the opportunity, equity funding in AV tech companies eclipsed $12 billion in 2021, up more than 50% from 2020, according to CB Insights. The U.S. funding is dominated by Waymo, which topped out at $5.5 billion including from Alphabet, and by Cruise, which is backed with $10 billion from GM, Honda, and other investors, with a $5 billion line of credit from GM Financial. Pony.ai, co-founded by former Baidu AV lead developer Peng in 2016, is financed with $1.1 billion, including a $400 million investment from Toyota.
Start-ups in the AV space have piggybacked on major automakers and ride-hailing services, for instance, Motional, formed in 2021 through a joint venture with Hyundai and pilots with Lyft. Uber sold its self-driving unit, the Advanced Technologies Group, to Aurora Innovation, after Uber’s co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick had touted self-driving as a priority. Aurora, invested in by Amazon, Hyundai, and venture firms Sequoia Capital and Greylock, is working on launching a commercial robotic truck system by late 2023, followed by a robotaxi project.
For Zoox, supplying Amazon with last-mile deliveries from its shuttles is a possible scenario. “We haven’t rule this out as a use case,” said Jesse Levinson, Zoox CTO and co-founder. “Our business model is charging people money to take a ride. The biggest cost of a ride-sharing vehicle is the driver. We can amortize the cost of the vehicle by these fares over five years.”
Also Check: How Much Can You Negotiate On A Used Car
Building A Safer Driver
When the Self-Driving Car project began in 2009, the team needed to prove that it was even possible to make a car drive itself. To do this, the team developed custom software and made hardware modifications to a Toyota Prius and set out to tackle over 100,000 miles of autonomous driving on public roads. This testing included some extremely challenging routes on the Golden Gate Bridge, the curves of Lombard Street in San Francisco, and up mountainous roads to Lake Tahoe. It worked, so the team kept going, and over time added a second test vehicle, the Lexus RX450h SUV.
Early on, the team focused on freeway driving because itâs a simpler driving environment to master: stay in your lane, maintain speed, donât hit the car in front of you. The cars were offered to a handful of Googlers to use on their daily commute to learn how people would really use the technology. The response was overwhelmingly positive â users said the car made their commute less stressful and tiring. But the team also learned that it wasnât reasonable to expect people to pay attention throughout a ride and be able to take back control of the car at short notice. This insight into human behavior and the teamâs commitment to safety led them to commit to an even more audacious mission: a fully self-driving car that could take anyone from A to B.
