Autonomous cars
Autonomous cars are vehicles that are driverless, they don’t need a human input to be driven. They are sensing environment and feeling the surrounding with special techniques as computer vision, radars, GPS, odometer.
Advenced control system analyze the data from the sensors and calculate the best path for the vehicle. The sensor can identify obstacles, car can also identify traffic signs. As you go the car is watching the road, so it means if you go for example on a new road the car is updating its information about the road and maps. While driving you can set on the autonomous regime and the computer takes the control of the car, it will keep the speed limit, its watching all around the car so it knows where are other cars, if a car in front of you is too slow the car check if it is possible to overtake the car.
What are the advantage ?
The advantage is that you can enjoy the ride while the car is driving, or you can work while traveling or etc. In a future we can use them as a taxi services, it would be awesome, no more annoying taxi drivers and unfair costs. You can also save some money on a personal driver. Avoiding human mistakes like slow reactions, low percentage of aggressive drivers,
What are the disadvantages ?
If you really love driving cars you can’t enjoy them properly. The computers can also make mistakes so we can’t trust the to one hundred percent. They also don’t have the sixth sense that save lives to many people.
The transport system
In Eu ( Belgium, France, italy, UK ) are planning to have driverless cars, the autonomous cars are allowed to be tasted in Germany, Netherland, Spain. In summer 2015 the France allowed to Peugeot and Citroen to test the autonomous cars in normal traffic. Also UK allowed the testing. The driverless car system that will be using in 2016 in France will be also used in Mercedes Benz, Audi.
Google car
Google car is probably the most developed autonomous car. The cars are developed in Google X which is an semi secret project of google developing self driving cars. Google use for the project these cars ( Toyota Prius, Audi TT, Lexus450h ) equipped with the self driving equipment. Google also have their own cars that are assembled by Roush Enterprises and use equipment from Bosh, LG, Lenksysteme and Continental. Each car have in them equipment about 150 000$ and LIDAR system ( thats system that measure distance between cars ).
In 2014 Google presented a new concept of their car that is without steering wheel and pedals, Google planed to test the vehicle in December 2015 at San Francisco Bay Area roads. Google is planning make these vehicles available for public in 2020.
History
First test of autonomous car were in 1920s, they planned that first autonomous car will be in 1950 but truly self-sufficient car came on 1980 with Carnegie Mellon Universitys labsand then in 1984 with Mercedes Benz.
Legislation
In the United States, state vehicle codes are not necessarily prohibited highly for a automated vehicles. To clarify the legal status of and otherwise regulate such vehicles, several states have enacted or are considering specific laws. As of the end of 2013, four U.S. states, (Nevada, Florida, California, and Michigan), along with the District of Columbia, have successfully enacted laws addressing autonomous vehicles.
In 2011 the Nevada legislature passed the law of authorization of using autonomous cars.
In spring 2015 Switzerland allowed to test new autonomous passat at public roads at Zurich.
sources :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_self-driving_car
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car
https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/
