The news related to autonomous cars is being heard everywhere on the news portals. Carmakers, engineers and developers are giving their best to build an autonomous vehicle.
Recently, German-based carmakers Volkswagen has made a discussion with many cars manufacturing company for building an autonomous car. Lots of investments have been for this project
To operate autonomous driving carmakers, suppliers and technology companies are already investing more than 55 billion euros ($64 billion) globally, consulting firm AlixPartners estimates.
The post describes a few things about how do self-driving cars work.
Software and Hardware
Self-driving cars are equipped with software to make sure that they can perform as best as possible without human intervention. After many years of examining the cars use top of the line laser-based radar system called lidar. Lidar is used for light detection and ranging functions in tandem with the state of the art GPS and inertial measurement unit sensors or IMU to pinpoint the location of the cars down to a quarter of an inch.
An additional radar control will kick in whenever an obstacle comes within 15 to 30 feet of the vehicle, these sensors exist to keep the car running and to keep you safe but in order to be convenient and efficient the car uses the deep learning technology to review cameras and to predict the fastest routes to your destination with unique algorithms always running between the computerized parts in and around the car’s engine. The vehicle can also calculate the probability of actions to be taken by other drivers in the chance of natural occurrences as you speed the road.
Cost
One of the biggest perks of this technology is that considering the services that offer it’s not too expensive, in a standard self-driving automobile the extra sensitive global positioning system needed for these cars which would utilize internal altimeters gyroscopes and tachometers for accuracy ranges between 80 to 6,000 American dollars. Video cameras mounted on the roof range a hundred and twenty-five dollars to two hundred dollars.
Radar sensors on the bumpers reach a combined total of around one hundred and fifty dollars. The lidar device towering on the top of the car is the most expensive at a max of eight thousand dollars and central computers which start to steer and the car can average out to three times the sensor cost as calculated by Boston Consulting Groups, vehicles with the ability to put on autopilot mode reach an extra five thousand five hundred dollars more than the asking price and 10,000$ for the machinery to go driverless.
Safety and communication features
Nowadays many new models vehicles include rear-mounted backup cameras as of May 16, 2018; this is the required feature by the NHTSA. According, to the administration they believe this development will annually save 69 new lives. Forward collision avoidance is another requirement whether you have noticed it or not it’s been in several different makes and model since 2003; this helpful feature applies extra pressure to the brakes when the car is approaching an obstacle at too high speed.
There is still a bigger computerized in our daily commutes, and that’s lane detection. Some cars currently on the road have computerized autopilot on standby it kicks in when a human driver isn’t moving fast enough, and the car need to swerve into a new lane and researchers believe that the next level in the road safety whether cars are fully driverless or not relies on a type of vehicle to vehicle communication, this way car regardless of where they are made would have some universal set of signals that could be transmitted to avoid accidents and keep the commuter safe.
Car companies
Almost every car companies are involved in making self-driving cars. Now Silicon Valley is teaming up with car companies in a competition to come to the most bankable self-driving car. Tesla believes they will have the model ready to hit the pavement by 2018. Google, Toyota, Honda, and Nissan think they will be road ready by 2020. Volvo on the other hand not only expects to have driverless cars on the market by 2020 they go so far as to say their version will be death proof.
