A fully autonomous car is one that can drive
itself without you paying attention to traffic.
While many carmakers are currently developing
and testing autonomous cars, they’re not
really ready for showrooms.
Semi-autonomous cars, however, are in showrooms
and on the road today.
Although semi-autonomous cars can drive themselves
for short distances, like on the freeway,
they require the driver to pay full attention
and retake control at any moment.
That’s because, unlike fully autonomous
cars, they don’t have redundant safety backup systems
In a semi-autonomous car, the driver is the
safety backup.
No matter if a car is semi- or fully autonomous,
it navigates the road with the same tech systems.
These include digital cameras, lasers and
radar sensors.
Semi-autonomous cars have these mounted in
the front of the car.
Most fully autonomous cars, however, will
have sensors embedded all around the car,
giving it a 360-degree view of the traffic
and road around it.
An autonomous car takes information gathered
by its exterior sensors and basically creates
a video game in reverse.
Oh, like Mario Kart. Duh.
No, let me explain what I mean.
Essentially, a video game takes code and turns
it into a digital image.
Autonomous cars do that in reverse.
They take a visual image and convert it into a
code that its systems can interpret.
That’s how the steering, braking and throttle
are able to be controlled
just like a human driver
The onboard computers are seeing like we do
but with a much broader view.
With this precise 360-degree view, an autonomous
car can see more and react more quickly than
any human driver ever could.
Looking beyond the immediate view around the
car, an autonomous car knows where it’s
going based upon GPS navigation.
Although self-driving cars could easily rely
on current GPS, automakers like Toyota and
Tesla are working on developing high-definition
GPS maps.
These hi-def GPS maps will do more than just
broadly tell the self-driving car where the
road is but instead give a more detailed view
of the road ahead.
This way, the car will know about a blind
sharp corner even before it can see it with
its own sensors.
Carmakers are also working to improve upon
an autonomous car’s ability to know about
street and traffic conditions long before
it ever reaches the road.
Toyota will soon be transmitting images captured
from its cars that have forward- and rear-facing
cameras into a cloud computer system.
There, Toyota will build a realtime street
view map of global freeways, which, in turn,
will be fed back to its cars.
Lastly, car companies are working on a Wi-Fi-based
vehicle communication technology called vehicle
vehicle to vehicle — or V2V.
V2V will allow self-driving cars to monitor
one another with their exterior sensors but
also communicate with one another.
Moreover, cars can warn one another about
ice on the road or other roadway hazards.
Again, that way, your car will know the road
ahead before it starts every journey.
Currently, only one car on the road today
has V2V, and that's the 2017 Mercedes-Benz E-Class.
However, it is expected that many new cars
will implement the technology as semi- and
full autonomy become more common.
But the question on everyone's mind is
When are these fully autonomous cars going
to start solving mysteries
like Kit from Knight Rider?
So long as you have no follow-up questions
Very soon.
