The Future of Autonomous Cars.

Autonomous Cars or self-driving cars are capable of sensing their environment and driving without human involvement. The Guardian predicted in 2015 that self-driving cars would be a norm in 2020. However, fully autonomous cars are still in the prototype stage. The industry is still confused about the future of these cars. On one hand, the development of technology makes one believe that it is possible. On the other hand, there are issues that are more complex.

The concept of a self-driving car is to equip it with cameras, and when it senses a collision, a need to stop or divert it will. This simple concept is more complex than it sounds. Driving is a complex activity. Humans are interactive drivers, we use gestures and eye contact to figure out the right of way, react to situations and conditions, and make judgments that are difficult to take in split seconds. For Canadians, the matter is worse with heavy snowfalls. However, the main reason why fully autonomous cars are not fully functional is their own limitations. They need to make AI solve real-world problems. Autonomous cars need to navigate our streets with a high degree of reliability. For that, we need a lot of training data. the best way to train a self-driving car is to show it billions of hours of footage. Collecting that data is very expensive. Since some events are rare in occurrence or to capture, like accidents, it is possible for the car to have a lack of knowledge. This creates a dangerous situation.

The companies are investing in this heavily. This was a good decade for AI, and it reached a very high potential. This concept, whenever available, is going the change the face of transportation completely. There has already been an initial success. Waymo is driving around in Arizona without a driver behind the wheel. Recently Waymo announced that their vehicles have covered 20 million miles on public roads, which is a huge boost for the technology. In the near future, there is a possibility that your car can drive you to work and then drive back home, only to pick you back in the evening. All this in one command!