Since the invention of the wheel in 3500 BC, we've come a long way. In 1867, the first motorcycle was developed. With the invention of cars, man could go further and explore more territory. Steam engines were the first, and they paved the way for the development of bullet trains. In 1903, the Wright brothers invented the first piloted aeroplane, and their flight led to the development of airbuses and space rockets.
And now, in this millennium, the time has come for the self-driving cars.
What is an Autonomous vehicle?
Autonomous vehicles can drive themselves with no driver to assist. You don’t need to check blind spots, stay inside the lanes, park, or change lanes on your own anymore. The automobile will take care of everything. All you have to do is get in an autonomous car and instruct it where to go. If you say nothing, your automobile will check your calendar and presume where you're going. Your car will calculate the best path across city streets, junctions, and freeways. When you get to your location, simply walk out the door and your car will immediately enter park seek mode, searching for a parking spot and parking itself. And a simple tap on your phone will return it to you!
Living in a dream or watching a sci-fi movie? No. It’s real!
How do autonomous cars work?
Autonomous vehicles use various sensors, actuators, complex algorithms, machine learning systems, and powerful processors. Autonomous vehicles also include Machine Learning technology, to learn new information. With these technologies, the car can detect risks such as approaching vehicles, pedestrians, bumpy roads, and other hazards, and make smarter driving decisions.
IoT devices are used by autonomous vehicles to create and maintain a map of their surroundings. A slew of Internet of Things sensors strewn about the vehicle. These sensors, coupled with Radar sensors, video cameras, and Lidar sensors, give vast volumes of data to the car's computer systems about traffic, roads, navigation, and other concerns. They keep an eye on the traffic around them, detect traffic lights and road signs, and keep an eye out for pedestrians. By bouncing light pulses off the car's surrounds, Lidar (light detection and ranging) sensors assess distances, detect road limits, and recognise lane markers.
After processing all of this sensory data, the software maps a path and delivers commands to the car's actuators, which control acceleration, braking, and steering. The software follows traffic rules and navigates obstacles thanks to hard-coded rules, obstacle avoidance algorithms, predictive modelling, and object identification.
Advantages of Self Driving cars
Driverless cars are safer.
Driverless cars, in theory, should be safer than ordinary automobiles. Human errors and emotion are the main reason for the most of the road accidents. Taking human emotional factor out of driving should reduce accidents. Here wins the autonomous cars, as they constantly take in all driving situations, such as the environment and other automobiles, at a rate far faster than the human brain can analyze the situation. This system delivers a perspective of the environment that a human being can never see or expect. Focusing in all directions, at all time, are well beyond human capability.
More time to productivity or fun
One of the most exciting aspects about self-driving cars is that journeys are no longer a waste of time. People can do some additional work or relax while driving instead of concentrating on the road while on their way to work or home. Without worrying about their driving, the motorist can make and receive calls and texts, browse social media, or drink their coffee. This increases productivity by adding time to one's day, as well as lowering the number of car accidents and fatalities caused by weary or distracted driving.
Computers are focused and not emotional
When it comes to focus, computers outperform humans. Computers don't drink and drive, and they aren't distracted by a pretty girl passing by. The operating system, the brain of a computer, analyses the situation, and make its own decisions to finish the activity without being influenced by any other human factors like emotions or lack of experience. As a result, autonomous vehicles can react to traction loss more accurately and swiftly than humans. They don't over steer, make abrupt shifts, or slam on the brakes in a panic, as humans do in these situations. Humans can only see in front of them, but because IoT sensors provide information from all directions at once, self-driving cars are better at avoiding collisions with other objects.
Accident avoidance is a difficult talent for humans to master. This is something that each of us must learn via near misses or worse. No one understands how to deal with traction loss until they have experienced it. Self-driving cars, on the other hand, all have the same amount of experience. Their minds are identical, and they've each logged many thousand hours behind the wheel. One experience with one car is shared with all the cars in the world.
Role of IoT in self driving cars
The Internet of Things (IoT) is at the heart of autonomous car technology. IoT plays a critical role in perceiving the data, sharing it between sensors and central processing units. This information includes the actual path, traffic, and how to navigate around any obstacles.
IoT technologies pave the way for a new age of connected vehicles. IoTs significantly boost the self-driving vehicle's ability to better understand its environment, in addition to the sensors that already exist like camera, radar, lidar, etc. Cloud computing services use and combine all this information to enhance the data and provide value added services to self-driving vehicles.
IoT assists vehicles in improving road safety by recognizing pedestrians, bicycles, barriers, speed bumps, puddles, and potholes. It avoids crowded areas and making the car easier to find a parking spot. This also saves energy by reducing the amount of time spent stuck in traffic.
Conclusion:
According to a statistical analysis, 72.5 million smart automobiles will be delivered worldwide by 2023, and 15% of all vehicles being fully driverless by 2030. Toyota, Volvo, Tesla, and Ford are just a few examples of major automobile manufacturers aiming to deliver completely autonomous vehicles to the mass market. Tesla already has a vehicle with self-driving capabilities.
Autonomous vehicles are a perfect example of technology amalgamation. Autonomous vehicles operate on the idea of detecting the surrounding world of the vehicle, processing those data to useful actions.
IoT in autonomous vehicles makes way for better mobility, as well as enhanced passenger and pedestrian safety. It reduces traffic congestion, minimize fuel use and increase sustainability.
All of these are advantages of self-driving cars and IoT in play. If every country acknowledges the importance of self-driving cars and understands their benefits, traffic rules will be changed and new policies will be implemented to suit the new vehicles. Autonomous cars may become popular in the next few years, similar to how smartphones became popular in the last few years.
Cheers, Regami Solutions