autonomous driving

A self-driving car, also known as an autonomous car, driver-less car, or robotic car (robo-car), is a car that is capable of traveling without human input.Xie, S.; Hu, J.; Bhowmick, P.; Ding, Z.; Arvin, F.,
Distributed Motion Planning for Safe Autonomous Vehicle Overtaking via Artificial Potential Field
IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2022. Self-driving cars use sensors to perceive their surroundings, such as optical and thermographic cameras, radar, lidar, ultrasound/sonar, GPS, odometry and inertial measurement units. Control systems interpret sensory information to create a three-dimensional model of the surroundings. Based on the model, the car identifies appropriate navigation paths, and strategies for managing traffic controls (stop signs, etc.) and obstacles.Hu, J.; Bhowmick, P.; Jang, I.; Arvin, F.; Lanzon, A.,
A Decentralized Cluster Formation Containment Framework for Multirobot Systems
IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 2021.

Once the technology matures, autonomous vehicles are predicted to impact the automobile industry, health, welfare, urban planning, traffic, insurance, labor market and other fields.

Autonomy in vehicles is often divided into six levels, according to a system developed by SAE International (SAE J3016). The SAE levels can be roughly understood as Level 0 – no automation; Level 1 – hands on/shared control; Level 2 – hands off; Level 3 – eyes off; Level 4 – mind off, and Level 5 – steering wheel optional.

, vehicles operating at Level 3 and above were an insignificant market factor. In December 2020, Waymo became the first service provider to offer driver-less taxi rides to the general public, in a part of Phoenix, Arizona. In March 2021, Honda was the first manufacturer to sell a legally approved Level 3 car. Nuro began autonomous commercial delivery operations in California in 2021. In December 2021, Mercedes-Benz received approval for a Level 3 car. In February 2022, Cruise became the second service provider to offer driver-less taxi rides to the general public, in San Francisco.

, several manufacturers had scaled back plans for self-driving technology, including Ford and Volkswagen.

History

Experiments have been conducted on automated driving systems (ADS) since at least the 1920s; trials began in the 1950s. The first semi-automated car was developed in 1977, by Japan's Tsukuba Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, which required specially marked streets that were interpreted by two cameras on the vehicle and an analog computer. The vehicle reached speeds up to with the support of an elevated rail.

A landmark autonomous car appeared in the 1980s, with Carnegie Mellon University's Navlab and ALV projects funded by the United States' Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) starting in 1984 and Mercedes-Benz and Bundeswehr University Munich's EUREKA Prometheus Project in 1987. By 1985, the ALV had demonstrated self-driving speeds on two-lane roads of , with obstacle avoidance added in 1986, and off-road driving in day and night time conditions by 1987. A major milestone was achieved in 1995, with Carnegie Mellon University's Navlab 5 completing the first autonomous coast-to-coast drive of the United States. Of the between Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and San Diego, California, were autonomous (98.2%), completed with an average speed of . From the 1960s through the second DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005, automated vehicle research in the United States was primarily funded by DARPA, the US Army, and the US Navy, yielding incremental advances in speeds, driving competence in more complex conditions, controls, and sensor systems. Companies and research organizations have developed prototypes.

The US allocated US$650 million in 1991 for research on the National Automated Highway System, which demonstrated automated driving through a combination of automation embedded in the highway with automated technology in vehicles, and cooperative networking between the vehicles and with the highway infrastructure. The programme concluded with a successful demonstration in 1997 but without clear direction or funding to implement the system on a larger scale. Partly funded by the National Automated Highway System and DARPA, the Carnegie Mellon University Navlab drove across America in 1995, or 98% of it autonomously. Navlab's record achievement stood unmatched for two decades until 2015, when Delphi improved it by piloting an Audi, augmented with Delphi technology, over through 15 states while remaining in self-driving mode 99% of the time. In 2015, the US states of Nevada, Florida, California, Virginia, and Michigan, together with Washington, DC, allowed the testing of automated cars on public roads.

From 2016 to 2018, the European Commission funded an innovation strategy development for connected and automated driving through the Coordination Actions CARTRE and SCOUT. Moreover, the Strategic Transport Research and Innovation Agenda (STRIA) Roadmap for Connected and Automated Transport was published in 2019.

In November 2017, Waymo announced that it had begun testing driver-less cars without a safety driver in the driver position; however, there was still an employee in the car. An October 2017 report by the Brookings Institution found that the $80 billion had been reported as invested in all facets of self driving technology up to that point, but that it was "reasonable to presume that total global investment in autonomous vehicle technology is significantly more than this".

In October 2018, Waymo announced that its test vehicles had traveled in automated mode for over , increasing by about per month. In December 2018, Waymo was the first to commercialize a fully autonomous taxi service in the US, in Phoenix, Arizona. In October 2020, Waymo launched a geo-fenced driver-less ride hailing service in Phoenix. The cars are being monitored in real-time by a team of remote engineers, and there are cases where the remote engineers need to intervene.

In March 2019, ahead of the autonomous racing series Roborace, Robocar set the Guinness World Record for being the fastest autonomous car in the world. In pushing the limits of self-driving vehicles, Robocar reached 282.42 km/h (175.49 mph) – an average confirmed by the UK Timing Association at Elvington in Yorkshire, UK.

In 2020, a National Transportation Safety Board chairman stated that no self-driving cars ( SAE level 3+) were available for consumers to purchase in the US in 2020:

On 5 March 2021, Honda began leasing in Japan a limited edition of 100 Legend Hybrid EX sedans equipped with the newly approved Level 3 automated driving equipment which had been granted the safety certification by Japanese government to their autonomous "Traffic Jam Pilot" driving technology, and legally allow drivers to take their eyes off the road.

Definitions

There is some inconsistency in the terminology used in the self-driving car industry. Various organizations have proposed to define an accurate and consistent vocabulary.

In 2014, such confusion has been documented in SAE J3016 which states that "some vernacular usages associate autonomous specifically with full driving automation (Level 5), while other usages apply it to all levels of driving automation, and some state legislation has defined it to correspond approximately to any ADS utomated driving systemat or above Level 3 (or to any vehicle equipped with such an ADS)."

Terminology and safety considerations

Modern vehicles provide features such as keeping the car within its lane, speed controls, or emergency braking. Those features alone are just considered as driver assistance technologies because they still require a human driver control while fully automated vehicles drive themselves without human driver input.

According to Fortune, some newer vehicles' technology names—such as AutonoDrive, PilotAssist, Full-Self Driving or DrivePilot—might confuse the driver, who may believe no driver input is expected when in fact the driver needs to remain involved in the driving task. According to the BBC
...