Will Cars Ever Have Full Autopilot
The leading names in technology and in automaking, decades of research and trials have gone into making cars fully autopilot, but the final project is still far out of reach but each year they are getting closer. However, the closest any car manufacturer has achieved is the Tesla models which autopilot handles highway driving and can automatically brake and keep you in your lane which is crazy to think about. Within this article we will go into the depths of full autopilot cars and what Tesla has achieved so far.
How exactly do self-driving cars work?
The main technology used will be cameras which track all the objects around the car and have the car react if you get too close to these objects, teaching the in-car computers the rules of the road and ways of driving is essential for this idea to work. Most humans drive during their day-to-day routine and is one of the most complex activities we have to do with having to multitask on multiple different things within a car journey. However, for the computers following a list of rules isn’t enough to do the job as us humans do things like making eye contact with other drivers top confirm who has the right of way and make judgements depending on the different situations.
The cars computers need to understand and build up their data of where other cars, cyclists and pedestrians are and where they are going to go, this involves millions of miles of driving to achieve this, to build up the memory on the computers.
Why is it taking longer than expected to get self-driving cars on the road?
There are many limitations when looking at fully automotive cars, the computers need to be able to sole real world problems which is the most difficult thing to train, even with extraordinary amounts of money being invested and time, teams are still struggling. Navigating our roads with a high degree of reliability is needed, people’s lives are at risk here.
The duration of training needed is the big problem, it would need to be shown billions of hours’ worth of driving footage to teach the computer what good driving looks like, collecting this data also comes at a price as you can imagine. Carmakers have tried to get around this issue in many ways, by training cars in simulations and engineer specific situations to gain that extra training, and for this they are getting that bit closer to mastering full autopilot.
Are self-driving cars going to be good for the environment?
One concern on everyone’s minds. Evidence suggests that self-driving cars will be good for the environment as many human drivers drive in a wasteful way for example, braking too hard, accelerating which all waste fuel, a computer would avoid this. However, there are many different viewpoints as you could say as the driver is basically getting chauffeured about that they will take advantage of this and go on even more trips than they did before, which will not be good for the environment. Research within this area is still underway.
Tesla
All Tesla cars since April 2019 come with standard autopilot which includes traffic aware cruise control and autosteer, mainly used on the highways. They work by using cameras, ultrasonic sensors and a radar to navigate the environment around the car, this helps driving become less stressful and safer as you will have more awareness then you normally do when driving a standard car.
Tesla have many different packages to offer, the autopilot and enhanced autopilot and full self-driving capability is intended to work alongside a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is ready to take over if needed, so no you can’t fall asleep at the wheel.
Autopilot includes traffic aware cruise control so this will drive at a n average speed of the road and assists in steering within clearly marked roads. Within this package you can go with an advance option which assists in changing lanes on the highways, helps to navigate on the roads for example can suggest lane changes and will help with parallel parking with a single touch. In addition, can help you move out of tight spaces when using the mobile app, all these features will make your day to day driving so much more relaxing and takes pressure off you as a driver.
Overall, it’s crazy to think that one day we will have roads full of fully autopilot cars and in fact is scary to think so. However, this will not happen for a long time, as we said before this will require lots of money and time to make this achievable but one day this could be the future.
Although autopilot cars are still a thing of the future for now, there are plenty of amazing technological features on fantastic models in our range, which can be acquired through our bad credit car finance option.