Driverless Cars

The Title "Driverless cars" itself tells us that cars can be moved without drivers. Driverless car, also known as robot car, self-driving car, is an automobile which is capable of sensing its surroundings and moving without the help of humans or with little help of humans.

We are in a state where a car can drive 100 miles... before human assistance is necessary _{-Dr.Sebastian Thrun}

History

The Tsukuba Mechanical Engineering Lab in Japan created an automobile that could really travel alone. This is a remarkable achievement in automobile industry. That vehicle could travel around a specially designed and clearly marked area at a speed of 30kmph. Later two proffessors (place not mentioned) with their team designed a fully automated, driverless vehicle. This vehicle is a van consisting series of cameras and sensors that can process images of changing scenery and information related to controlling mechanism of steering, accelerator, and brakes. Later on VAmp with his twin programmed to move a vehicle with a speed of up to 130kmph and can automatically overtake slow vehicles.

How do these vehicles work

Driverless cars are worked on sensors. In simple words, sensor is a device that is used to detect something and send that information to other electronic devices. Few sensors used on autonomous cars are cameras, radars, lasers and also ultrasonic sensors. GPS( Global Positioning System) and mapping technology are also used in these vehicles to determine the location of automobiles. In these automobiles, information detected by the sensors is sent to vehicle's "actuators" (Actuators are the components of a machine responsible for controlling and moving the system) , which can control acceleration, brakes and steering. This car is specially designed with some kind of software which consists of number of codes, obstacle avoidance algorithms, "smart" object discrimination and many more. This in-built software follows traffic rules and navigate obstacles. For example, this software is designed such that it is able to determine whether the surrounding vehicle is a bicycle or a motorcycle.

Pros and Cons of autonomous cars

In the advanced stage, some chips are being created in addition to these sensors allowing autonomous cars to take complex decisions by themselves. With 5G technology in these autonomous cars can get internet speed up to 100 times faster than 4G. Moreover with 5G technology these autonomous cars can take their own decisions like overtaking faster vehicles and moving in zig zag paths whereas without 5G technology it is practically impossible.

Previously we used to see driverless cars in science fiction movies but now Autonomous cars have already been developed by BMW, Tesla and even tested on UK roads. you can see a demo of self diving car in the following link: https://youtu.be/tlThdr3O5Qo