Author: Zech
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Last updated: January 2021 The first self-driving cars appeared in the 1980s in a project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The vehicle, called NavLab, looked like a mail delivery truck and bore little resemblance to Google’s self-driving car (without a safety driver) that first demonstrated on Arizona roads in 2017. Since then, the technology has continued to evolve, giving rise to predictions about how self-driving cars will change the way we live and work. Here are some of the more interesting predictions: 1. Traffic fatalities fall by 90% Yes, that’s right. The…
The XC90 crossover SUV will reportedly be the first Volvo vehicle to feature the company’s… [+] A limited, but soon to be introduced, Autopilot system. (Photo by Michael Kovach/Getty Images for Volvo Cars of North America) “When a Volvo car is in self-driving mode, the company assumes full responsibility,” Volvo President and CEO Hakan Samuelsson said just days after unveiling the user interface for its upcoming self-driving system, Intellisafe Autopilot. This bold statement was taken from a speech given at the “The Future of Self-Driving Cars – Are They Safe?” seminar hosted by Volvo at Sweden House in Washington, D.C.…
As for the Google Car, one of its benefits would ostensibly be to ease congestion: cars could be driven at very close speeds without nasty human randomness (the kind of randomness that plagues the clean models that engineers favor) causing problems.In other words, current roads will be able to handle much more traffic. Shoulders and lanes may no longer be necessary. The very idea of tolerant design is a relic from a more barbaric time in history.So if this reality comes true, will all the billions of dollars engineers have spent predicting additional lanes be refunded? Of course not. Do…
Photo: Google The rules for Google’s experimental self-driving cars go into effect on California roads on September 16. Although the company’s self-driving cars have driven more than 1 million kilometers since it began secretly developing them in 2009, they have only been tested once by a government agency on public roads, by Nevada Department of Transportation (DMV) employees in May 2012.IEEE Spectrum obtained the test drive logs and related emails under the Freedom of Information Act. Some of this information isn’t new. For example, Nevada officials revealed that Google’s self-driving Toyota Prius passed the test almost immediately. But what wasn’t…