Tag: self-driving cars

Typically, a self-driving vehicle is a car that can sense its environment and navigate through it without any human input. To ensure that they work well, each vehicle has a GPS unit, some sensors, and a navigation system. This car applies positional data and navigation to sensor data and localizes itself so that it can refine its location estimate. The control system, therefore, determines how the vehicle eventually uses this information to make decisions.

How will their transition on the roads work

The transition of a self-driving car on the road will happen in 3 major stages. Stage one is limited autonomy; stage 2 is semi-autonomy, and stage 3 is full autonomy with shared data. Stage one is where the vehicle has various safety system built with the basic technologies behind an autonomous car. These include millimeter wave radar and 3D camera systems.

These technologies are not only powerful but also powerful. Stage two is where the vehicle will be allowed to share its position and course information with all the surrounding cars. Finally, stage 3 is a combination of advanced systems and vehicle to other vehicles.

Advantages

• It reacts faster than humans on the roads.
• It doesn’t drive when drunk or get distracted while driving. It also doesn’t need any breaks when exhausted, maybe only for maintenance.
• It can be built to have no blind spots so as to maintain full 360-degree awareness.

Do self-driving cars have a dirty future?

Although a self-driving car on the road will become more efficient and safer, it could lead to a big increase in emissions and energy consumption. In fact, if people will choose this vehicle over bicycles, the energy consumption will be increased by over 60%.

This might override the benefits of ride sharing, eco-friendly, or safety improvements. However, it is expected to smooth urban navigation and bust traffic jams. More so, a fully autonomous car would make driving a less tedious affair thereby increasing the number of kilometers that can be traveled by approximately 50 percent.

Moreover, basic economics indicates that if you make travel easier, convenient, and cheaper, people will travel more. This will also allow people with disabilities, seniors, and children to take to traveling on their own. Although this is good socially, it is likely to increase energy consumption by between 10 and 20 percent. However, remember, the road systems were built for human drivers hence they will have to be modified to cater for these cars.