Autonomous Vehicle Trend, Essay Example

The vision of a universe where vehicle drive themselves, transport all passengers smoothly to their destinations at a constant speed while keeping the distance with other vehicles reasonable has encouraged various high tech companies like Daimler, Google, GM, Nissan, BMW, Toyota and Volvo to pour millions of dollars to boost the development of driverless cars.  Autonomous car has the capabilities of sensing the environment and doing navigations without the output of human. They are also termed as robotic cars. Sensing of the surrounding is done through techniques like Lidar, GPS, radar, and computer vision. Since the discovery of autonomous cars in Europe, there has been a steady trend showing an increase in the number of autonomous cars on the roads today. The development of autonomous cars in urban centers has seen steady and rapid progress for the past three decades. This paper gives a summary of the current of the state of art existing in the autonomous driving within urban centers based mainly on the authors’ experience. The paper gives the trend that has been seen since the discovery of autonomous vehicles.

The first autonomous driving ever attained was during the 10000BC. This was when the first horse driver ever got onto a horse’s back and rode on it successfully without giving it any direction. Despite the fact that this type of technology scarcely attained the goal of arriving or reaching the target destination, for more than 11900 years, it was the single form of autonomous driving that human beings ever achieved. In the 1980s, things started changing when a Mercedes Benz team made a van, which drove on open, or empty streets with speeds of almost 100km/hr. there were different projects that started after the efforts of the Benz team (Ozguner, Acaman & Redmill, 2011). Another autonomous driving was attained in 1987 on a natural train using the sensors by the HRL laboratories on the ALV (Autonomous Land Vehicle. The project was funded by the DARPA. Later in 1995, Mercedes Benz again achieved an impressive 95% autonomous driving in Europe. It took place in a trip of 1600 KM across the Europ0ean continent. The United States government funded projects such as Demo 1, 2 and 3, which managed to achieve many miles of the unmanned or unmanaged driving off the European roads. Research shows that from 2004-2007; there was a DARPA grand college competition that occurred. The competition was mainly based on which college would produce the most efficient driverless cars than all other colleges. There were also major manufacturers in the competition. The winner would take home 2 million USD and the runners up 1 million USD. This competition took place annually making thus increasing the driverless car technology to a higher level (Ozguner, Acaman & Redmill, 2011). In the current world, when 2013 began there were autonomous cars, many of which are still in the laboratory undergoing appropriate testing. There are others that have driven and covered millions of miles within the US and Europe. In addition, the technology has started showing up in many consumer markets with certain systems such as improvised automated parking, cruise control, low speed autonomous parking and driving. All these are transitional steps towards the enhancement of a full driving autonomy.

Major corporations have recently announced their intentions to start selling autonomous vehicles in few years to come. Some jurisdictions have managed to pass legislations that allow driverless vehicles to operate on the public roads like any other vehicles.

The trend of autonomous vehicle has been discussed and analyzed by many scientists who view the impacts that autonomous vehicles would cause to the normal transport system in different countries as well as the level of technologies in different regions of the world. There are many speculations about the impacts of autonomous vehicle. Advocates do prediction that consumers will soon ends up buying various affordable autonomous vehicles that have the desirable effects of reducing both traffic costs, pollutions and accidents as well as reduce the roadway costs. With this, there would an increase in saving and autonomous vehicles would soon become ubiquitous thus everyone would benefit (Ozguner, Acaman & Redmill, 2011). Nonetheless, there are projections that the benefits of these vehicles would be smaller compared to their cost of operations. The Economist did sponsor an insightful debate discussing whether self-driving cars have the possibility of being feasible in the predicted or foreseeable future. Nevertheless, only recently have the transportation practitioners began exploring how the autonomous vehicles would actually affect the normal planning decisions like the roadway construction and design, public transit demand, as well as, the parking costs.

As stated earlier, the trend of the automated vehicle is solely based on the past records about the autonomous vehicle consumption as well as the current consumption in different countries. The Yahoo Finance gives a brief summarized description of the autonomous vehicle consumption in tabulated manner showing the increase or decrease in each year in different regions of the world. The Mercedes Benz, a German based company produces the highest number of autonomous vehicles. In 2012, the number of autonomous vehicles on the German roads were hitting past 150 recording about 40% of the total autonomous vehicles in the whole world. Germany, with its high level of technology in motor industry, has several initiatives that promote driverless car consumption and manufacture. Besides, the country has also exported many autonomous cars to other countries such as Russia and Japan. The German government considers technology the epitome of development and progress. With this, high school kids have been introduced to high tech skills that would see them bettering and improving the technology used in manufacturing autonomous cars (Ozguner, Acaman & Redmill, 2011).

Japan is another country that has also majored in research on autonomous car production behind the European and American motor vehicle industry. In Japan, the legislation of ownership of autonomous vehicles was passed 2013 allowing many people to import or buy autonomous vehicles from the local companies. In the US, many Ivy League Universities have been involved in the making or doing of research on autonomous vehicles. In Stanford University, the first test of autonomous vehicle was done. From research outcomes by several specialists, autonomous vehicle could work could serve as an efficient means of road transport, especially when people behaved responsibly.

It is important to note that motor vehicle technology demands a high level of maintenance through regular checkups and several other operations. These processes are always expensive and cost a lot of money. For instance, the GPS, the automatic transmission and communication system and the rearview cameras cost up $2000. Navigation security services like the Tom Tom, Onstar also cost over $350 annually (subscription fees). Notably, autonomous vehicles also require other equipment services like the automatic transmissions, the wireless network, the diverse redundant, the navigation and special maps, software and servers. Considering the benefits of autonomous vehicles and comparing them with the stated disadvantages (which are mainly in terms of costs), it is evidenced that autonomous vehicles would obviously increase in their number in many years to come. Advocates and other researchers state that the driver error contributes to virtually 90% of the road accidents that occur in many countries. In other words, drivers tend to cause more mistakes when driving compared to the program that does the driving of autonomous vehicles. The estimated congestion and the reduction of parking costs, energy savings and reduction of emissions makes autonomous vehicles more preferred since it is environmentally (Campbell et al., 2010). In the US, for instance, environmental conservation campaign has always taken a new twist with the government trying to encourage its people to avoid pollution. Notably, the petrol free vehicles that took place during the time when the US was faced with inadequate fuel services was highly encouraged even after the country had sorted out the issue that caused the shortage crisis. The US government would obviously prefer vehicles that cause less harm to the environment than those that lead to pollution causing diseases to citizens. Autonomous vehicles also encourage independent mobility of people.

Research conducted by the US based research firm depicts that most Americans do not prefer travelling in public service vehicles such as buses. This explains the reason why the United States remains the largest consumer of motor vehicles in the world. Typically, Americans love their private lives. Most people prefer taking their families on holidays through private means. Since autonomous vehicles offer the best choice means of transport, especially when the distance involved is not that long. In this case, autonomous vehicles prove to be the most preferred due to its efficiency (Campbell et al., 2010). One is able to interact with his or her family members while travelling. It is appealing to many. Research done by Stanford University gives out the attitudes of Americans on anything that comes in with new technology. Many prefer testing first before doing the purchase. A good example is on the iPhone. Most Americans would line up to purchase new iPhones while disposing the old ones. In this case, it is predictable that most Americans would prefer buying autonomous cars compared to the driver cars. In Northern California, the trend remains the same with many people showing curiosity about the new device in the City.

Despite the above, there are also disadvantages of driverless cars. Modern vehicles are seen to be durable compared to the driverless vehicles. From statistical evidences, the number of users of the common vehicles increased from 11.5 years during the 1970 model year to 16.9 in 1990. This shows that the normal driver vehicle is still preferred compared to the new driverless vehicle. This suggests that the current vehicles will have 20 years or longer lifespan. In other words, the new vehicle technologies may require 3-5 decades in order to be implemented in the 0.9 of the operating vehicles. In addition, deployment may also be faster in the developing nations where fleets of cars are expanding as well as in regions where inspection of vehicles is very strict, for instance, the Japan’s shaken system. Besides, the autonomous driving capability will definitely increase the buying prices of vehicles by large amounts of money (Campbell et al., 2010). This will require a lot of money as annual subscription fees. Despite the fact that the autonomous vehicle would one day replace the common vehicle, it will indisputably take almost five decades for it to be successfully implemented just the same way it occurred with the normal driver cars. The autonomous vehicle implementation projections show that the 100% implementation would take place past 2060. This will be roughly ten years from now.

From the above elaborations, it is obvious that the autonomous vehicle would be accepted in many roads across the world but would take a long time. This is due to various restrictions in rules governing the road transport sector in several countries. In Japan, changing the strict rules governing inspections of all vehicles on Japan roads will be a long process. In addition, most analysis believes that driverless vehicles can be used easily to commit disasters such as bombing because it does not have to be controlled by a driver. The Europeans and Americans promoted the manufacture of autonomous cars. In many developing countries, the governments are cautious about rapid unemployment that will be caused. Other researchers believe that the interior of cars may be turned into offices. Autonomous vehicles could be used as mobile offices. This will encourage efficiency and promote high production in many companies. In conclusion, autonomous vehicles would be beneficial only after implementation of the right rules governing their operations. Motor vehicle companies will take some time before switching their activities to manufacture autonomous vehicles. The trend in many countries is promising and many people would prefer such kinds of cars as long as their operations would be efficient.

References

An in depth analysis of Autonomous Cars. Retrieved from http://autonomouscars.com/

Campbell, M. et al (2010). Autonomous driving in urban environments: approaches, lessons and challenges. Philosophical Transactions: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences Vol. 368, No

Ozguner, U., Acaman, T. & Redmill, K. (2011). Autonomous Ground Vehicles. London: Artech