The driverless car is an emerging family of technologies, ultimately aimed at a full "taxi-like" experience for car users, but without a driver. Together with alternative propulsion, it is seen as the main technological advance in car technology by 2020. These projects are also referred to as an autopilot, autonomous vehicle, auto-drive car, or automated guided vehicle (AGV). Alternative propulsion is a term used frequently for power train concepts differing to the standard internal combustion engine concept used in gasoline- or diesel-fueled vehicles. ...

Driverless passenger programs include the FROG passenger vehicles from the Netherlands, the ARGO research project from Italy, and the DARPA Grand Challenge from the USA. See also smart cars. 2007 Urban Challenge The DARPA Grand Challenge is a prize competition for driverless cars, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the central research organization of the United States Department of Defense. ... A smart car is an automobile with some artificial intelligence functionality. ...

History

The history of autonomous vehicles started in 1977 with the Tsukuba Mechanical Engineering Lab in Japan. On a dedicated, clearly marked course it achieved speeds of up to 20 miles per hour, by tracking white street markers. Special hardware was necessary, since commercial computers were much slower than they are today. The breakthrough in autonomous driving came in the 1980s through the work of Ernst Dickmanns and his team at Bundeswehr Universität München. Their vision-guided Mercedes-Benz robot van achieved 60 miles per hour on streets without traffic. The subsequent 800 million Euro EU project Prometheus on autonomous vehicles (1987-1995) brought further progress. A culmination point was achieved in 1995, when Dickmanns´ re-engineered autonomous S-Class Mercedes-Benz took a 1000 mile trip from Munich in Bavaria to Copenhagen in Denmark and back, using saccadic computer vision and transputers to react in real time. The robot achieved speeds exceeding 110 miles per hour on the German Autobahn. Unlike the early robot cars it drove in traffic, executing manoeuvres to pass other cars. It was, however, designed as a research system without emphasis on long distance reliability. On the 1000-mile trip, it achieved a mean time between human interventions of 9km, or 95% autonomous driving. Also in 1995, the CMU Navlab project achieved 98.2% autonomous driving on a 3000-mile "No hands across America" trip. The abilities of these early vehicles heavily influenced research world-wide, including three DARPA efforts known as Demo I, Demo II, Demo III. Demo III (2001) demonstrated the ability of unmanned ground vehicles to navigate miles of difficult off-road terrain, avoiding obstacles such as rocks and trees. For the album by Ash, see 1977 (album). ... Tsukuba (Japanese: つくば市; -shi; from Han character 筑波) is a planned city located in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. ... Ernst Dickmanns, a former professor at Bundeswehr Universität München in Munich (since 1975), is the pioneer of autonomous cars or robot cars. ... This page is about the Mercedes-Benz brand of automobiles and trucks from the DaimlerChrysler automobile manufacturer. ... 1987 (MCMLXXXVII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The United States S-class submarines, often simply called the S-boats, were the first class of submarines built to a United States Navy design. ... Munich: Frauenkirche and Town Hall steeple Munich: St. ... The Free State of Bavaria  (German: Freistaat Bayern), with an area of 70,553 km² (27,241 square miles) and 12. ... Copenhagen (IPA: , rhyming with pagan (the way the Danes themselves pronounce the name of the capital in English), or , with a as in spa; Danish   IPA: ) is the capital of Denmark and the countrys largest city (metropolitan population 1,211,542 (2006)), at present made up of 16 municipalities. ... A saccade is a fast movement of an eye, head or other part of an animals body or device. ... The INMOS Transputer was a pioneering parallel computing microprocessor design of the 1980s from INMOS, a small English company. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into freeway. ... 2001: A Space Odyssey. ...

The challenge

Though the vision of a fully autonomous vehicle is clear, it would be such an upheaval in technology and lifestyle that few dare contemplate a 'Big Bang' new technology that would simply do it. From a scientific/engineering point of view, this looks like a case of an AI-complete problem, meaning that it is so complex that it can only be solved completely by a program that has human-level intelligence. According to the Big Bang, the universe emerged from an extremely dense and hot state (bottom). ... AI-complete is, by analogy to NP-completeness in complexity theory, a term first coined by Fanya S. Montalvo to indicate that the difficulty of a computational problem is equivalent to solving the central Artificial Intelligence problem, i. ...

However, some are attempting to solve bits and pieces of the problem — either for the benefit of the limited invention created, or explicitly as stepping stones towards a fully driverless car. Though most of the projects are government-sponsored, there is already a significant involvement from the private sector.

The challenges involved in realising this vision can broadly be divided into the technical and the social. The technical problems are broadly in the design of the sensors and control system required to make such a car work. The social challenge is in getting people to trust the car, getting legislators to permit the car onto the public roads, and untangling the legal issues of liability for any mishaps with no person in charge.

The elements of any solution

The dream of a driverless car seems fantastic, and therefore remote. However, any solution can be broken down to four sub-systems:

• sensors: the car knows where an obstacle is and what is around it;
• navigation: how to get to the target location from the present location;
• motion planning: getting through the next few meters, steering, and avoiding obstacles while also abiding by rules of the road and avoiding harm to the vehicle and others;
• control of the vehicle itself: actuating the system's decisions.

In examining every proposed solution, one should look at the following questions: To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Table of geography, hydrography, and navigation, from the 1728 Cyclopaedia. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... It has been suggested that Side of the road (traffic) be merged into this article or section. ...

• Is this truly a complete system? Does it drive itself door-to-door?
• To what degree is the proposed solution a step towards the complete vision, or is it just a trick?
• Is the car 'autonomous', or would it need changes to the infrastructure?
• How feasible (technically, economically, and politically) would it be to deploy the entire solution?
• Can the system allow for and include existing vehicles driven by humans, or does it need an open field?
• How would it cope with unexpected circumstances?

Recent projects

The work done so far varies significantly in its ambition and its demands in terms of modification of the infrastructure. Broadly, there are three approaches. The first group to be discussed here is the fully autonomous vehicles (DARPA, ARGO) —which are the most ambitious, but none are deployed. The second approach uses various enhancements to the infrastructure (either an entire area, or specific lanes) to create a self-driving closed system. Such systems already function in many airports, on railroads, and in some European towns. The third approach is to incrementally remove requirements from the human driver, by various "assistance" systems. This approach is slowly trickling into standard cars (e.g. improvements to cruise control).

An important concept that cuts across several of the efforts is vehicle platoons. In order to better utilize road-space, vehicles are assembled into ad-hoc train-like "platoons", where the driver (either human or automatic) of the first vehicle makes all decisions for the entire platoon. All other vehicles simply follow the lead of the first vehicle. Grouping vehicles into platoons is one proposed method to increase road capacity without building additional traffic lanes. ...

Fully autonomous

These technologies are the most ambitious: They allow a car to drive itself following a pre-set target, until it gets there all on its own. The downside of these seeming marvels is that they are very limited in terms of the environment in which they can operate: either a desert (free of any human or human-made obstacle), or a clearly-marked, well-painted (in this case Italian) Autostrada (motorway). Therefore, the real benefits of door-to-door are as remote as ever. Autostrada is the Italian word for motorways, but is used in several countries including Poland and Romania. ... Motorway symbol in UK, France and Ireland. ...

Free-ranging military vehicles

There are three clusters of activity relating to free-ranging off-road cars. All these projects are military-oriented.

• US military DARPA Grand Challenge

Main article: DARPA Grand Challenge

The US Department of Defence announced on the July 30, 2002 a "Grand Challenge", for US-based teams to produce a vehicle that can autonomously navigate and reach a target in the desert of the south western USA.

In March 2004, the first competition was held, for a prize-money of $1 million. Not one of the 25 entrants completed the course. However, in October 2005 five different teams completed the 135-mile (217 km) course, and the Stanford University team won the $2 million prize.

Following the 2004 failure, in which several cars were distracted by the "race" to the detriment of basic technology that would allow for actual completion, the 2005 teams were focused on the challenge at hand, and did not seek to develop generic solutions, or a particularly speedy car.

The sensors were based on visual, Radar, and laser technologies. The navigational course was pre-programmed, and the motion planning and obstacle avoidance were handled by on-board computers - many of the entrants used eight or more computers to manage the car. Though the vehicles were equipped to avoid collision, they did not have any notion of rules-of-the road - but simply regarded each other as static obstacles.

For a more complete description the DARPA Grand Challenge see the official web site and the press coverage.[1][2][3] The US military has several projects applying autonomous vehicle technologies for military purposes.[4][5]

• European Land-Robot Trial (ELROB)

Not to be outdone by the USA, the German Dept. of Defence announced an event similar to the DARPA Grand Challenge, held in May 2006. Unlike the DARPA event, it is not in the spirit of a challenge, but of a demonstration or trade show. The event included various military autonomous and remotely-operated robots, for various military uses. ELROB is less cutting-edge than the Grand Challenge, but more practical, in that some of the systems on display could be ordered and implemented immediately.

In August 2007 a civilian version of the event will be held in Switzerland.

The most impressive effort in the fully driverless firle was The Smart team from Switzerland, presenting "a Vehicle for Autonomous Navigation and Mapping in Outdoor Environments". For pictures of their ELROB demo, see this.

• The Israeli Military-Industrial Complex

As a followup from its success with Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles, and following the construction of the Israeli West Bank barrier there has been significant interest in developing a fully automated border-patrol vehicle. Two projects, by Elbit Systems and Israel Aircraft Industries are both based on the locally-produced Armored "Tomcar" and have the specific purpose of patrolling barrier fences against intrusions.

The "SciAutonics II" team in the 2004 DARPA Challenge used Elbit's version of the Tomcar.

2007 Urban Challenge The DARPA Grand Challenge is a prize competition for driverless cars, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the central research organization of the United States Department of Defense. ... July 30 is the 211th day (212th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 154 days remaining. ... Stanford redirects here. ... ELROB Logo The European Land-Robot Trial (ELROB) is the first European robot trial providing an opportunity to demonstrate today’s state-of-the-art robotics. ... President Dwight Eisenhower famously referred to the military-industrial complex in his farewell speech. ... A Boeing X-45A UCAV The Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) is the name of a new class of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) that have been designed to carry out air strikes. ... The barrier route as of May 2005. ...

ARGO

ARGO is an Italian project (1996-2001) to allow a car to follow the normal (painted) lane marks in an unmodified highway. The culmination of the project was a journey of 2,000 km over six days on the motorways of northern Italy dubbed MilleMiglia in Automatico, with an average speed of 90 km/h. 94% of the time the car was in fully automatic mode, with the longest automatic stretch being 54 km.

The ARGO vehicle, a modified Lancia Thema, had only two black-and-white low-cost video cameras on board, and used stereoscopic vision algorithms to understand its environment. This is in stark contrast to the "laser, radar - whatever you need" approach taken by other efforts in the field. The Lancia Thema was a model of Italian automobile produced in the 1980s. ... Stereo card image modified for crossed eye viewing View of Manhattan, c. ...

The project was run by the universities of Parma and Pavia, coordinated by Alberto Broggi, and financed by the Italian government.

Pre-built infrastructure

The following projects were conceived as practical attempts to use available technology in an incremental manner to solve specific problems, like transport within a defined campus area, or driving along a stretch of motorway. The technologies are proven, and the main barrier to widespread implementation is the cost of deploying the infrastructure.

Dual mode transit - monorail

There is a family of projects, all currently still at the experimental stage, that would combine the flexibility of a private automobile with the benefits of a monorail system. The idea is that privately-owned cars would be built with the ability to dock themselves onto a public monorail system, where they become part of a centrally managed, fully computerized transport system—more akin to a driverless train system (as already found in airports) than to a driverless car. This idea is also known as Dual mode transit. (See also Personal rapid transit for another interesting concept along those lines, for purely public transport.) The KL Monorail in Kuala Lumpur, a colourful straddle-beam monorail Gyroscopically Balanced Monorail (1907) by Brennan and Scherl The term monorail or industrial monorail is also used to describe any number of systems in which a chair or carrier is suspended from, or rides on, an overhead rail structure... Dual mode transit describes theoretical transportation systems in which vehicles operate on both public roads and on a guideway; thus using two modes of transport. ... Artists rendering of SkyTran, a proposed PRT design. ...

Groups working on this concept are:

• RUF (Denmark)
• BiWay (UK)
• ATN (New Zealand)
• TriTrack (Texas, United States)

Automated highway systems

Automated highway systems (AHS) are an effort to construct special lanes on existing highways that would be equipped with magnets or other infrastructure to allow vehicles to stay in the centre of the lane, while communicating with other vehicles (and with a central system) to avoid collision and manage traffic. Like the dual-mode monorail, the idea is that cars remain private and independent, and just use the AHS system as a quick way to move along designated routes. AHS allows specially equipped cars to join the system using special 'acceleration lanes' and to leave through 'deceleration lanes'. When leaving the system each car verifies that its driver is ready to take control of the vehicle, and if that is not the case, the system parks the car safely in a predesignated area. An automated highway system (AHS) or Smart Roads, is an advanced Intelligent transportation system technology designed to provide for driverless cars on specific rights-of-way. ... // Acceleration is the time rate of change of velocity, and at any point on a velocity-time graph, it is given by the slope of the tangent to that point In physics or physical science, acceleration (symbol: a) is defined as the rate of change (or derivative with respect to... Acceleration is the time rate of change of velocity, and at any point on a v-t graph, it is given by the gradient of the tangent to that point In physics, acceleration (symbol: a) is defined as the rate of change (or time derivative) of velocity. ...

Some implementations use radar to avoid collisions and coordinate speed.

The most impressive system of this type built so far is the AHS demo of 1997 near San Diego, sponsored by the US government, in coordination with the State of California and Carnegie Mellon University. The test site is a 12-kilometre, high-occupancy-vehicle (HOV) segment of Interstate 15, 16 kilometres north of downtown San Diego. The event generated much press coverage. The technology is the subject of a book.

This concerted effort by the US government seems to have been pretty much abandoned because of social and political forces, above all else the desire to create a less futuristic and more marketable solution.

Free-ranging on grid

The FROG (free-ranging on grid) company from the Netherlands uses a combination of a low-autonomy vehicle with a supervisory central system. The company's purpose-built electric vehicles locate themselves using odometry, recalibrating themselves occasionally using a "maze" of magnets embedded in the environment, and dGPS. The cars avoid collisions using infra-red and laser sensors.

The supervision of the vehicles, their navigation and adherence the any rules of the road are done by a centralised computer system. Such a system is well suited to managing the traffic in a limited space (as is the reliance on magnets) but unsuited for running tens or hundreds of thousands of cars in a full city.

The FROG system is deployed for industrial purposes in factory sites, and as a pilot public transport system in several cities, not least Rotterdam, where the system experienced an accident that proved to be caused by a Human error(!).

FROG is one of few fully commercial companies in this field.

Driver-assistance

Though these products and projects do not aim explicitly to create a fully autonomous car, they are seen as incremental stepping-stones in that direction. Many of the technologies detailed below will probably serve as components of any future driverless car — meanwhile they are being marketed as gadgets that assist human drivers in one way or another.

Driver-assistance mechanisms are of several distinct types, sensorial-informative, actuation-corrective, and systemic.

Sensorial-informative

These systems warn or inform the driver about events that may have past unnoticed, such as

• Lane Departure Warning System (LDWS), for example from Iteris, see also this overview.
• Rear-view alarm, to detect obstacles behind. This system gets activated when the reverse gear is engaged.
• Visibility aids for the driver, to cover blind spots and enhanced vision systems such as radar, wireless vehicle safety communications and night vision.
• Infrastructure-based, driver warning/information-giving systems, such as those developed by the Japanese government

A lane departure warning system is a mechanism designed to warn a car driver when his or her vehicle begins to move out of its lane (unless a turn signal is on in that direction) on freeways and arterial roads. ... The blue cars driver sees the green car through his mirrors but cannot see the red car without turning to check his blind spot. ... This long range RADAR antenna, known as ALTAIR, is used to detect and track space objects in conjunction with ABM testing at the Ronald Reagan Test Site on the Kwajalein atoll[1]. RADAR is a system that uses radio waves to determine and map the location, direction, and/or speed... Wireless vehicle safety communications is a possible aid to car safety and road safety. ... Night-vision is seeing in the dark. ...

Actuation-corrective

These systems modify the driver's instructions so as to execute them in a more effective way, for example the most widely deployed system of this type is ABS; conversely power steering is not a control mechanism, but just a convenience - it is not involved in decision making. Power steering is a system for reducing the steering effort on cars by using an external power source to assist in turning the wheels. ...

• Anti-lock braking system (ABS) (also Emergency Braking Assistance (EBA), often coupled with Electronic brakeforce distribution (EBD), which prevents the brakes from locking and losing traction while braking. This shortens stopping distances in most cases and, more important, it allows the driver to steer the vehicle while braking.
• Inboard brakes allow large fade resistant discs or drums, without contributing to unsprung weight and wheel bounce, which degrade braking, handling and ride, and increase mechanical loads.
• Traction control (TCS) actuates brakes or reduces throttle to restore traction if driven wheels begin to spin.
• Four wheel drive (AWD) with a centre differential. Distributing power to all four wheels lessens the chances of wheel spin. It also suffers less from oversteer and understeer.
• Electronic Stability Control (ESC)(also known for Mercedes-Benz proprietary Electronic Stability Program (ESP), Acceleration Slip Regulation (ASR) and Electronic differential lock (EDL)). Uses various sensors to intervene when the car senses a possible loss of control. The car's control unit can reduce power from the engine and even apply the brakes on individual wheels to prevent the car from understeering or oversteering.
• Dynamic steering response (DSR) corrects the rate of power steering system to adapt it to vehicle's speed and road conditions.

A review of the overall "feel" to actuation-correction in a Jaguar XK convertible. An anti-lock braking system (ABS) is a system on motor vehicles which prevents the wheels from locking while braking. ... EBA can mean one of the following: Eba, a food made from Cassava As an acronym, EBA stands for Endemic Bird Area Enlarged Board of Appeal, see Appeal procedure before the European Patent Office Enterprise Bargaining Agreement Everything But Arms Trade Agreement Engineering & Business Alliance This is a disambiguation page... Electronic Brake Force Distribution or EBD is an automobile brake technology that automatically varies the amount of force applied to each of a vehicles brakes. ... An inboard braking system is an automobile technology where the brakes are not located in the wheels, as is common today, but instead near the differential. ... In automobiles, fade, or brake fade is the reduction in stopping power caused by a buildup of heat in the brake pads and rotors. ... Unsprung weight is a term used to describe that part of a vehicles mass that is directly connected to the wheels, and not isolated through the suspension. ... Traction control systems, on current production vehicles, are typically (but not necessarily) electro-hydraulic systems designed to prevent loss of traction (and therefore the control of the vehicle) when excessive throttle or steering is applied by the driver. ... Four wheel drive or 4x4, is a type of four wheeled vehicle drivetrain configuration that enables all four wheels to receive power from the engine simultaneously in order to provide maximum traction. ... Oversteer is the phenomenon ocurred in an automobile when the rear-end of it doesn´t follow the trajectory of the front-end tending to overtake this one causing the car to spin. ... Understeer is a term for a car handling condition during cornering in which the circular path of the vehicles motion is of a markedly greater diameter than the circle indicated by the direction its wheels are pointed. ... Electronic Stability Control (ESC) is the generic term for systems designed to improve a vehicles handling, particularly at the limits where the driver might lose control of the vehicle. ... This page is about the Mercedes-Benz brand of automobiles and trucks from the DaimlerChrysler automobile manufacturer. ... Acceleration Slip Regulation (ASR) is a way to guarantee that the wheels have equal traction when the driver needs to accelerate quickly. ... Understeer is a term for a car handling condition during cornering in which the circular path of the vehicles motion is of a markedly greater diameter than the circle indicated by the direction its wheels are pointed. ... Oversteer is the phenomenon ocurred in an automobile when the rear-end of it doesn´t follow the trajectory of the front-end tending to overtake this one causing the car to spin. ... DSR means: Dynamic steering response. ... Power steering is a system for reducing the steering effort on cars by using an external power source to assist in turning the wheels. ...

Driver-assistance preview from Popular Science.

Systemic

• Self parking: e.g. technology from Toyota selling for $700, with a 70% take-up rate.
• Follow another car on a motorway ("Enhanced" or "adaptive" cruise control), like The Ford, Honda or Vauxhall(GM).
• Nissan's "Distance Control assist"
• Death Brake; there is a move to introduce deadman's braking into automotive application, primarily heavy vehicles, and there may also be a need to add penalty switches to cruise controls.

A good collection of these technologies is available at Automotive component manufacturers' sites, such as Siemens VDO Automotive or http://delphi.com/manufacturers/auto/safesecure/warning/ Delphi (Ford)]. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Vigilance control. ... A penalty switch is a device that ensures a human operator is alert and on the job and sooner or later take some action if the operator falls asleep or takes ill. ... Cruise control (sometimes known as speed control or Autocruise) is a system to automatically control the speed of an automobile. ...

Interesting stuff from GM-Opel.

A good summary of how far things have progressed without any true automated driving is provided by The Economist

See also Safety Features. Car safety is the avoidance of car accidents or the minimization of harmful effects of accidents, in particular as pertaining to human life and health. ...

Existing and missing technologies

In order to drive a car, a system would need to:

1. Understand its immediate environment (Sensors)
2. Know where it is and where it wants to go (Navigation)
3. Find its way in the traffic (Motion planning)
4. Operate the mechanics of the vehicle (Actuation)

Arguably, 2 1/2 of these problems are already solved: Navigation and Actuation completely, and Sensors partially, but improving fast. The main unsolved part is the motion planning. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Table of geography, hydrography, and navigation, from the 1728 Cyclopaedia. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... An actuator is the mechanism by which an agent acts upon an environment. ...

Sensors

Sensors employed in driverless cars vary from the minimalist ARGO project's monochrome stereoscopy to mobileye's inter-modal (video, infra-red, laser, radar) approach. The minimalist approach imitates the human situation most closely, while the multi-modal approach is "greedy" in the sense that it seeks to obtain as much information as is possible by current technology, even at the occasional cost of one car's detection system interfering with another's. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... The driverless car is an emerging family of technologies, ultimately aimed at a full taxi-like experience for car users, but without a driver. ...

Mobileye is a well respected company who makes detection systems for cars, which are currently only used for driver assistance, but are eminently suitable for a full-fledged driverless car. This video demonstrates the capabilities of the system: all pedestrians, cars, motorbikes etc. are clearly displayed in video, with a frame around them and the distance between "our" car and the object observed. The system also detects the objects' motion (direction and speed) and can so calculate relative speeds, and predict collisions.

• Japanese infra-red article
• some things from the DARPA challenge....
• Road-sign recognition

Navigation

The ability to plot a route from where the vehicle is to where the user wants to be has been available for several years. These systems, based on the US military's Global Positioning System are now available as standard car fittings, and use satellite transmissions to ascertain the current location, and an on-board street database to derive a route to the target. The more sophisticated systems also receive radio updates on road blockages, and adapt accordingly. GPS redirects here. ...

See the main article on Automotive navigation systems. A taxi in Kyoto, equipped with GPS navigation system An automotive navigation system is a satellite navigation system designed for use in automobiles. ...

Motion Planning

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8EWHndSn34

This is current research problem. See the main article on the subject Motion planning. This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...

Control of vehicle

As automotive technology matures, more and more functions of the underlying engine, gearbox etc. are no longer directly controlled by the driver by mechanical means, but rather via a computer, which receives instructions from the driver as inputs and delivers the desired effect by means of electronic throttle control, and other drive-by-wire elements. Therefore, the technology for a computer to control all aspects of a vehicle is well understood. Electronic throttle control (ETC) is an automobile technology which severs the direct link between the accelerator pedal and the throttle. ...

Work done in simulation

While developing control systems for real cars is very costly in terms of both time and money, much work can be done in simulations of various complexity. Systems developed using simpler simulators can gradually be transferred to more complex simulators, and in the end to real vehicles. Some approaches that rely on learning requires starting in a simulation to be viable at all, for example evolutionary robotics approaches - see this example. This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...

Social issues

• Getting people to trust the car
• Getting legislators to permit the car onto the public roads
• Untangling the legal issues of liability for any mishaps with no person in charge.

Despair of progress in the foreseeable future: The UK government seems to see little progress until 2056. See Silicon Networks article and CNET.co.uk News.

Motivations

As nearly all car crashes (particularly fatal ones) are caused by human driver error, driverless cars would effectively eliminate nearly all hazards associated with driving as well as driver fatalities and injuries (travelling by car is currently one of the most deadly forms of transportation, with over a million deaths annually worldwide). This would be especially helpful to people that drive to bars and inebriate themselves; the ability for a car to shuttle them home would practically eliminate drunk driving crashes. A car accident in Yate, near Bristol, England, in July 2004. ... It has been suggested that Drunk driving (United States) be merged into this article or section. ...

Having the equivalent of a personal chauffeur would be a great convenience: A chauffeur is one who drives an automobile as a job. ...

• Time spent commuting could be used for work, leisure, or rest.
• Parking in difficult areas becomes less of a concern as the car can park itself away from a busy airport, for example, and come back when called on a cell-phone.
• Taxiing children to school, activities and friends would become solely a matter of granting permission for the car to handle the child's request.
• Allow the visually (and otherwise) impaired to travel independently.

A driverless car would also be a boon to economic efficiency, as cars can be made lighter and more space efficient with the absence of safety technologies rendered redundant with computerized driving. Also the technology would make transportation more efficient and reliable: there may be autonomous or remote-controlled delivery trucks dispatched around the clock to pick up and deliver goods. Moreover, driverless cars would reduce traffic congestion by allowing cars to travel faster and closer together. Economic efficiency is a general term for the value assigned to a situation by some measure designed to capture the amount of waste or friction or other undesirable economic features present. ...

Social Costs

The social costs of this innovation are similar to those of other past technologies: Unemployment, expense and the elimination of the "old way of doing things". See also Luddites. The Luddites were a social movement of English textile workers in the early 1800s who protested — often by destroying textile machines — against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt threatened their jobs. ...

As with any new labour-saving technology, this would lead to mass layoffs in the driving, cargo, and distribution industries. Taxis would also be automated, effectively eliminating a source of income for the less skilled. A similar if smaller impact is expected in the roadside-catering and other ancillary businesses. However, history shows that any such economic impact on jobs leads to economic benefits elsewhere that create employment, though often not for the exact same people displaced by the new technology. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

In order to recoup the development costs, and in order to maximise the profit opportunity that any exciting novelty presents, driverless cars will initially be significantly more expensive than manual cars.

Driving as a personal hobby and sport, and indeed the entire car-oriented sub-culture would be effectively eliminated. However, for those willing to pay for the extra feature, there could be an option to switch between manual and automated driving to make up for that. In biology, a subculture in a population of a microorganism is when one microbe colony in such a population is transferred onto blank growth medium and allowed to freely reproduce. ...

Discussion & Future

Some systems control everything centrally, and in some the vehicle is truly autonomous in the sense that it "thinks" about its own situation in the first person - such a system can integrate with Humans that think in first person.

Conversely. a system that centrally manages everything, though easier to build from a conceptual and engineering point of view, would face horrendeous economic barriers because of the costs of converting an entire city or country to the new system at once. In order to be compatible with humans the "first person" point of view is key. This is for three reasons:

1. a distributed scheme in which each component (car) takes care of itself reduces complexity
2. a system that has the concept of first-person operation can understand what a human driver is up to.
3. for the human driver to understand what the driverless car is doing, it needs to operate and "think" in as similar a way to a human as practical (and safe).

See also Coping, see Heidegger. Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger (September 26, 1889 – May 26, 1976) was a German philosopher. ...

Key players

International

The European Union has a multi-billion Euro programme to support Research and Development by ad-hoc consortia from the various member countries, called Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development. Several of these projects pertain to the subject of driverless cars, e.g.: The Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development, also called Framework Programmes or abbreviated FP, are funding programmes created by the European Union in order to support and encourage European research. ...

• The CyberCars project gathered much useful data about the actual and possible deployments of Driverless Cars for public transport. The main system discussed is based on FROG.

Many of the EU-sponsored projects are coordinated by a group called Ertico.

There are several national associations around the world that are active in research in the field of intelligent transportation systems, a term that seems to encompass anything which applies technology to the improvement of transport. In recent years there has been a trend in this field to move efforts away from the more visionary projects, such as driverless cars, to the more short-term, such as public transport and traffic management. Many of these organisations are government sponsored, and they all cooperate at some level or another. Some of the countries involved are: the USA, Australia, Korea (south), Taiwan, India--(specifically Intelligent vehicles), and Japan, specifically a cruise assist effort (see below). A more complete list of its organisations can be found here. The Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) program is a worldwide initiative to add information and communications technology to transport infrastructure and vehicles. ...

Governments

• USA:
  • Federal Government:
    • http://www.tfhrc.gov/its/its.htm
    • http://ntl.bts.gov/card_view.cfm?docid=2946
    • http://ntl.bts.gov/display.cfm?sub=i0&cat=9
  • Specifically, California
    • Caltrans PATH
• Japan has an impressive advanced-highway effort, doing "advanced cruise-assist", with an impressive future plan.

Universities and professional bodies

• Berkeley: [6]
• VisLab: Artificial Vision and Intelligent Systems Lab at Parma University
• Virginia Tech
• IEEE has an ITS group, and organizes conferences
• Japanese Automobile Research Institution

Commercial interests

• Daimler-Chrysler
  • Daimler-Chrysler
  • http://www.daimlerbenz.com/research/events/iv98.html
• Vauxhall set to launch the world's first driverless car in Europe - November 2005

Voluntary and hobbyist groups

• Autonomous Robots Magazine [7]
• RCTC / AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC entered 3 vehicles in the 2004 DARPA callenge.

In film

• The 1990 film Total Recall (film), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, features taxis apparently controlled by artificial intelligence; it is not clear, however, whether these are truly autonomous vehicles or simply conventional vehicles driven by androids.
• Another Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, The 6th Day (2000), features a driverless car in which Michael Rapaport sets the destination and vehicle drives itself while Rapaport and Schwarzenegger converse.
• The 2002 film Minority Report, set in Washington, D.C. in 2054, features an extended chase sequence involving driverless personal cars. The vehicle of protagonist John Anderton is transporting him when its systems are overridden by police in an attempt to bring him into custody; Anderton is unable to control the vehicle, and has to break out of it to evade the authorities.
• The 2004 film I, Robot (movie) also features advanced driverless cars.

Total Recall is an American science fiction film released on June 1, 1990 starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Ronald Shusett, Dan OBannon, Jon Povill and Gary Goldman. ... Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger (German pronunciation (IPA): ) (born on July 30, 1947) is an Austrian-American bodybuilder, actor and Republican politician, currently serving as the 38th Governor of California. ... Taxicab, short forms taxi or cab, is a type of public transport for a single passenger, or small group of passengers, typically for a non-shared ride. ... An android is an artificially created being that resembles a human being. ... Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger (German pronunciation (IPA): ) (born on July 30, 1947) is an Austrian-American bodybuilder, actor and Republican politician, currently serving as the 38th Governor of California. ... The 6th Day is a 2000 action movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Michael Rapaport. ... Michael Rapaport on The War at Home Michael Rapaport (born March 20, 1970 in New York City, New York) is an American actor and a comedian and has acted in over 20 films in the early 1990s. ... This is a list of film-related events in 2002. ... Minority Report is Steven Spielbergs 20th film. ... Nickname: DC, The District Motto: Justitia Omnibus (Justice for All) Location of Washington, D.C., in relation to the states Maryland and Virginia. ... Custody can refer to: Child custody Police custody (Arrest) Custody account, see either Custodian bank or Clearing house (finance) Banking) Category: ... I, Robot is a science fiction film released on July 16, 2004, loosely based on Isaac Asimovs Robot Series. ...

See also

• Unmanned ground vehicle
• Vehicle Infrastructure Integration
• Vehicle
• Artificial intelligence
• Rules of the road
• Traffic
• Road
• Road transport

Unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) are robotic platforms that are used as an extension of human capability. ... Vehicle Infrastructure Integration (VII) is the ongoing development of technology which directly links vehicles with the infrastructure. ... The Trikke is a Human Powered Vehicle (HPV) This article is about the means of transport. ... Hondas humanoid robot AI redirects here. ... It has been suggested that Side of the road (traffic) be merged into this article or section. ... Nighttime traffic captured by a camera over several seconds. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Disruptions in organized traffic flow can create delays lasting hours. ...

External links

• A history of the driverless car.
• An agglomeration of links
• A good overview from the EEtimes.
• [8]
• Slashdot discussions: animal-inspired robotics about The Economist article above.
• engadget discussion about how computer-controlled cars can reduce congestion.
• Driverless cars as assistive technology
• Transportation Communications Newsletter