Victor Owodunni Omotola

Self-Driving Cars These days, it can feel like we spend much of our lives stuck behind the wheel of a car. So, what if your car could take the wheel? Just press those two buttons and let go off the steering wheel. From Audi to Google, major companies are racing to develop cars smart enough to handle the driving. Self-driving cars have the potential to revolutionize the way we work and the way we socialize. The road to automation carries risks and concerns. If the computer that is driving the vehicle fails, somebody could, indeed, die. Self-driving cars will spark new opportunities and challenges on and off the road. Drivers can navigate the streets and tackle tough maneuvers like parallel parking. The self-driving car can parallel-park itself with the help of ultrasonic sensors, sensing an open spot and reversing the vehicle into the spot. New cars today are advanced enough to sense the driving environment and pull into parking spaces. This is just the first step in a high-tech revolution that could be the biggest game changer in the industry’s history. Over the 100 years of the industry, there have been a lot of great technologies introduced but the self-driving car is in a different category. Mass-produced self-driving cars don’t exist yet, but prototypes are no longer the stuff of science fiction. From stopping fatal car crashes to boosting mobility for disabled people and reshaping city landscapes; self–driving cars could re-defined how we drive and how we live. Auto makers like Audi are taking a gradual approach to automate driving through advanced driver-assistance system, which are designed to boost safety and convenience. Those system help you stay in the lane. They also warn you when you try to make a lane change and there is somebody in your blind spot. With a couple of new sensors and a lot of new functionality, you can actually implement self-driving cars based on the same technology that you have in cars today. We expect the first self-driving cars to be on the same technology that we have in cars today. The first self-driving cars are expected to be on the road by 2020, or even earlier than that. Since 2009, technology giant Google has been developing and testing self-driving cars near its offices in Mountain View. It claims they could be ready for public use as early as 2017. Car companies such as Ford, Mercedes and Audi have opened research centers in Silicon Valley to engineer and test technologies that enable cars to sense and interpret the road. What makes Jack, one of Audi’s self-driving prototype cars, special is the suite of sensors that is integrated in the car that allows the car to make informed decision and maneuver through traffic. One of the main sensors is a laser scanner that shoots out four rays to scan the environment – the surface, objects around you, in close distance, as well as road markings and road surfaces. Jack has 23 sensors, which allow a 360-degree view of the car’s driving environment. The sensors complement each other, performing better at some tasks than others while detecting moving vehicles about 3 football fields ahead and reacting to hazards in a fraction of a second. Notwithstanding, to make the car drive like human, it needs a brain sophisticated enough to interpret the visual information, come up with a plan, and execute it safely. Federal and State agencies are keeping a close eye on efforts to accelerate this revolutionary technology. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has developed levels of autonomy. Levels 1 and 2 are where one or two functions are automated, like adaptive cruise control and lane-keeping. Level 3 is where the car can, for some period of time, really take the responsibility for driving, but the human may still need to jump back in under different conditions. Level 4 is when there is no one responsible for the driving task other than the car itself. However, U.C. Berkeley Transportation Engineer, Steven Shladover, is skeptical that it will take much longer before cars can safely navigate all the complex situations encountered by human drivers. In 2012, California Governor, Jerry Brown, signed a bill that required the State’s department of motor vehicles to develop regulations to allow self-driving cars on the State’s roads and freeways. In 2014, the agency released rules for testing autonomous cars. Autonomous vehicles are legal for testing purposes on California’s roadways. With the testing regulations, we want to ensure that there is a person in the vehicle that is capable and qualified to be able to take over control if there is a problem. To get a testing permit, companies must have $5 million worth of insurance to handle claims arising from accidents. Without regulations in place, manufacturers are left to decide whether or not their product is safe. Self-driving cars need to alert human drivers to take control of the wheel in driving situations that they cannot handle. For instance, the Audi’s system warns the driver to take over with an array of signals such as L.E.D. lights and audio alerts. It may take a decade or more before consumers can buy a self-driving car. This is because the technology has to get better so that the sensors operate accurately in all weather conditions. A lot of auto makers are taking a different approach, which is to have a vehicle in which the human driver drives some of the time and the car drives some of the time. Making a robotic vehicle that can do everything a human driver can do is a huge challenge.