Technology Blog

Technology Blog

Songying Liu

Summary

A self-driving car, also known as an autonomous car, has sensors around the unmanned ground vehicle so it can move automatically without human efforts. Numerous cutting-edge technologies are evolved; however, it was not until year 2017 that the first self-driving car was permitted to operate on the real road. Even the car is complete autonomous, it still requires a human behind the wheel to react to emergencies.

Self-driving cars use a number of techniques to sense environment, which include laser light, radar, GPS and so on. High-tech control systems process information from sensors to utilize navigation paths, avoid obstacles and react to road signs.

In fact, the very first attempt at self-driving cars was in the 1980s when Carnegie Mellon University's (CMU) Navlab and ALV projects appeared in 1984, after that, Mercedes-Benz company and Munich's Eureka Prometheus Project of Bundeswehr University looked deeper into the technique in 1987. Notably, in 1995 CMU's NavLab made the actual breakthroug, when the car finished the very first unmanned driving test for a long distance, that is, 2,849 miles between Pittsburgh, PA and San Diego, CA, which includes 98.2% of self-driving at a quite fast speed---63.8 miles per hour on average. Then, as time goes by, car companies spent a lot on research to improve this technology in hope of a great fortune in the future.

Advantages

The benefits self-driving can bring to humankind is unprecedented.

First, it brings convenience to people with special needs, especially to the disabled. With self-driving, handicapped people can just go and sit in the car, set up destination and press the start button.

Second, this technology can improve traffic condition and road capacity. Since everything is programed inside the car, it can calculate the highest speed possible and find the fastest way to reach the destination, which can save human beings a lot of time on the road.