Self-driving cars. We’ve been hearing and dreaming about them for decades but just how long will it be until we can comfortably sit in the back seat with no-one but a computer behind the wheel? The answer to this question according to Mobileye’s Professor Amnon Shashua is 2022.
Mobileye (an Intel company) has been leading the way in autonomous vehicle technology for some time which includes the development of a safety standard that is proposed to be used to autonomous vehicle manufactures globally. This standard, Responsible-Sensitive Safety (RSS) which among other things defines safety thresholds, dangerous situations and proper responses for autonomous vehicles.
Now back to that date, 2022. In a presentation given by Amnon Shashua earlier this week at CES in Las Vegas, he discussed the need to continue to develop the Driver Assist technology currently found in many cars, rather that just focus on the end result – a completely self driving vehicle. Amnon said the reason for this is to prove and improve that technology that would also be used by autonomous vehicles but also to continue saving lives through better vehicle safety.
Ok, so where exactly are we on the timeline towards autonomous vehicles right now? Well as Dr Amnon Shashua explained in his presentation there are 5 commonly accepted levels of vehicular autonomy, with Zero being no autonomy.
As mentioned above, if you have a newer vehicle it may contain advanced driver assistance technology (such as lane guidance or auto emergency braking). These cars fall into levels 1 and 2. Levels 3 to 5 are vehicles that range from autonomy under some conditions to full autonomous function with no human intervention.
Remember along with the technology being developed to bring us autonomous vehicles we’ll also need governments to develop polices to have these vehicles on the road…and the trust of the public will need to be earned.
If you’d like to dig deeper into this topic, I recommend watching the presentation below.
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