While autonomous vehicles are a hot topic, new regular cars are drifting toward automation. My daughter-in-law bought a Honda Accord a few months ago and in country driving, you can take your hands off the steering wheel on roads where there is a center line and the car will stay in the center of your lane (Lane Keeping Assist System). If you steer the car a bit off center, it will correct to the proper place. It will also adjust if approaching a slow or stopped vehicle (Collision Mitigation Braking System).
A big problem with current autonomous vehicles is roads that are unmarked and without detailed maps. Therefore the concentration on development, for now, is on cities where there are detailed maps. But the problems of driving on unmarked roads are being worked on.* This is using GPS location and road recognition.
In contrast, MapLite uses sensors for all aspects of navigation, relying on GPS data only to obtain a rough estimate of the car’s location. The system first sets both a final destination and what researchers call a “local navigation goal,” which has to be within view of the car. Its perception sensors then generate a path to get to that point, using LIDAR to estimate the location of the road’s edges. MapLite can do this without physical road markings by making basic assumptions about how the road will be relatively more flat than the surrounding areas.*
I think all the major automobile companies and some not so well known ones have plans for autonomous driving.**
Most advanced seems to be Alphabet Inc. Waymo.
(Reuters) - Alphabet Inc’s Waymo is starting trials to ferry shoppers to Walmart Inc’s stores in Phoenix, Arizona, the company said on Wednesday.
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Having worked on self-driving cars since 2009 and with 5 million miles (8 million km) driven on public roads under its belt, Waymo is generally considered to be ahead of rivals in the development of autonomous vehicle technology.**
Uber, which appeared to be advanced until the death of a pedestrian is scheduling to restart tests according to a July 24th article by Aarian Marshall in Wired.
Until today, when self-driving chief Eric Meyhofer announced in a blog post that Uber would return its self-driving cars to the roads in Pittsburgh. With a catch. For now, the vehicles will stay in manual (human-driven) mode, simply collecting data for training and mapping purposes. To prep for the tech’s return to the public space, Uber has undertaken a wholesale “safety review”, with the help of former National Transportation Safety Board chair and aviation expert Christopher Hart.
* http://news.mit.edu/2018/self-driving-cars-for-country-roads-mit-csail-0507
** https://www.wsj.com/articles/ford-consolidates-self-driving-activities-plans-to-invest-4-billion-1532448641
*** https://www.reuters.com/article/us-waymo-walmart/waymo-self-driving-cars-to-ferry-walmart-shoppers-in-arizona-trial-idUSKBN1KF1OB
https://www.wired.com/story/self-driving-crash-uber-revamps-testing/
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