Author Bio:
Mira Jasmin is an enthusiastic blogger from Manchester, UK. In her extra time, she composes articles on many subjects, for example, engineering and travel. She is currently concentrating on driving practical test, which helps to enjoy your self-drive.
Driverless
cars are automobiles that navigate using an autopilot system that has them move
from one destination to another without any aid from a human driver. Ideally, a
human’s role in such a machine would simply be to indicate the destination.
Theoretically, such cars would have numerous benefits to the transportation
industry such as increasing road capacity, reducing automobile accidents, and
making transportation more efficient.
This technology however faces numerous
obstacles in its implantation. This is especially the case where driverless
cars would have to navigate alongside non-driverless ones. For the purpose of
usefulness, the bare minimum a driverless car would have to fulfil would be to
arrive at their destination with the instructions that the passengers provide
while safely avoiding other vehicles and obstacles.
Challenges and Benefits
Some
methods by which vested parties propose to meet these goals include coming up
with an entirely new infrastructure or altering the existing ones substantially
to accommodate this technology. One proposed idea is the development of a
monorail where cars can dock. The monorail would then guide the cars to their
desired destinations. This would greatly simplify their navigation and reduce
collisions. On the other hand, it would require significant changes to the
existing infrastructure. Other ideas put forth include the development of a
completely new kind of automobile that would operate on existing
infrastructure. Such automobiles would operate exactly like their traditional
counterparts. Driverless cars would not likely be subject to human error, which
is the leading cause of collisions on the roads.
There would be little if any
need for licences, traffic laws, traffic police, or even traffic lights. The
automobiles would be unaffected by erratic and jerky human controllers and
would therefore be quite able to drive in very close proximity to each other.
This could spawn a situation where a high road density would not have any
effect on speed such that cars could maintain a close proximity to each other
while, at the same time, travelling at average speed. The concept behind
autonomous cars currently is that they would be able to move by sensing their
surrounding by utilizing technology such as computer vision, GPS, lidar, and
radar. The vehicles would additionally be able to keep track of their locations
even when in uncharted territory or when conditions change.
The Current Situation
The
technology for driverless cars has slowly been in the works with
quasi-autonomous cars dating back to the 1920s. Major companies including
Volvo, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, and numerous others are committing resources to
the research and development of driverless cars. Some countries such as the US
even have legislation that permits the use of driverless cars. These efforts
seem to be paying off as predictions show that such automobiles may come into
being in the near future. Public opinion on this issue is in favour of
autonomous driving if the price were competitive with conventional driving practical test. If the
technology were to deliver all that it promises, there are numerous people all
over the world who would not only be comfortable with driverless cars, but
would actively seek it out.
