Self-driving cars utilize advanced technologies such as cameras, radar, and GPS to drive themselves and provide features such as collision avoidance, parking, and route navigation. However, technical errors, legal issues, and concerns about hacking will limit their popularization.
People are very interested in self-driving cars. How can a car drive itself? Self-driving cars are one of the defining technologies of the 21st century, and for the general public, they’re very exciting. It’s a bit scary to think of a car driving on its own when all you can see through the window is an empty driver’s seat. However, once you understand how self-driving cars work, it’s not all that strange or scary, and the impact they will have on many aspects of society is getting closer and closer.
If you think about what it takes to drive a car, it’s easier to accept that self-driving cars will have the technology to do the same. First and foremost, whether the driver is a human or a car, the main concern is ‘crashing’. There are two main types of collisions that can occur: the first is a collision with a stationary object, such as hitting a wall or fence of a building. The second is a collision with a moving object, such as a moving car or pedestrian. To avoid collisions, a car’s cognitive abilities are necessary. First and foremost, cognitive abilities that correspond to human visual perception are essential, which is why it’s essential for cars to be equipped with high-performance cameras. However, visual information alone is not enough to determine the distance, so radar is also used. Radar is a device that emits radio waves called microwaves and analyzes the distance and direction of an object from the reflected waves. In other words, the combination of a high-performance camera and radar acts like the human eye. Based on this perception, a system can be triggered to keep a certain distance from other vehicles.
One of the things that many people struggle with when learning to drive is parking. Self-driving cars need another device to park. It’s called a steering system. Steering allows for precise and delicate directional adjustments, much like a moving screw in a microscope. Pulling into a parking spot is difficult enough, but sometimes finding an empty spot is even harder. That’s why autonomous vehicles have high-performance GPS and navigation working every second of every day, so they can find and maneuver into a space on their own.
You may also question whether your self-driving car is traveling the right route to your destination. While the GPS used for positioning is important, the most important factor in self-driving car navigation is the accuracy of the “map” information. Whether the map is street-by-street or building-by-building can make a difference in the likelihood of an accident or the shortest possible route. The company with the most detailed map information is Google. This is why Google has been able to enter the autonomous car business and introduce the most advanced self-driving cars to date. There is also an integrated control system that integrates and records all this spatial information and generates new information. There is also a driving detection system that checks in real time whether the vehicle is traveling on the route. The main entity that manages these systems in an integrated manner is artificial intelligence.
The impact of hourly and sectional road information that we accumulate through experience on driving and wayfinding cannot be ignored. The last secret weapon of self-driving cars to mimic this is big data. Google Car is building big data by segment through the hourly and road-specific data it collects while driving. This accumulation of information is similar to the accumulation of human experience. Just as we choose a route based on our experience, A.I. suggests the best route based on accumulated data.
However, if A.I. is in charge of autonomous driving, there are concerns about hacking. Increasing security is a fundamental solution, but legal sanctions may be more effective than technical measures in preventing car hacking. However, there is currently no legislation that specifically penalizes car hacking. This is because there is still much to discuss. The main reason for this is the debate about whether a human or a car is to blame in the event of an accident. This is a very important issue because it also relates to the issue of car insurance. Objectively speaking, at the current state of the art, it’s safe to say that self-driving cars of Tesla’s caliber should be more widely available to the public. However, the legal issues are still unresolved, which will slow down their adoption.
Also, no matter how advanced the cognitive technology is, there will always be sensor blind spots and device errors. There have been a few accidents in recent years. The biggest one was the Tesla Model S, which crashed into a white truck container because its camera sensors were high and recognized the side of the container as the sky. The driver also didn’t brake when the car was hurtling towards the white truck. The driver had complete trust in the car. Until these technical glitches are resolved, it will still be difficult to trust 100% and let go of the wheel.
However, we can’t ignore the positive aspects that self-driving cars will have on society. There is a lot of talk about using self-driving cars as public transportation, similar to Uber taxis – in other words, driverless taxis. If this is realized, the idea of private car ownership will gradually fade away. If cars become a public good and become a form of public transportation, people will be able to move around much more easily, and it will help reduce pollution by reducing the number of private cars.
If you look at the elements of driving and think about how they apply to self-driving cars, you realize that self-driving cars are not that far off. Since cars are such an integral part of our lives and transportation, the impact of self-driving cars on society as a whole will be profound. The changes could be positive or negative, but one thing is for sure: self-driving cars will make a huge difference in our lives. It’s not long before cars will be exactly what they sound like: cars that drive themselves, so if we can keep our wits about us, we’ll soon be able to let go of the wheel once in a while.
