| |August 202119THOUGHT CENTRAL Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) are leading the new-age revolution of the automotive industry. Equipped with disruptive technologies, automakers across the globe are aggressively investing in building their AV or self-driving car portfolio. Despite offering a promise of reduced road fatalities, cheaper car rides and an easy mobility option for individuals with visual impairment or with physical disability, autonomous vehicles are still largely limited to spe-cial trial programs.According to research, by 2025 we'll see approximately eight million autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicles on the roads across the globe. But before merging into roadways, self-driving cars will first have to progress through six varying lev-els of driver assistance technology advancements. Defined by The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), the different levels of driving automation range from 0 (fully manual) to 5 (fully autonomous). While humans are responsible for monitoring the driving environment in the initial three levels, automated system monitors do the job in the latter ones. Vehicles belong-ing to level 5 do not require human attention and are not even expected to have steering wheels or acceleration/braking ped-als. They will be free from geofencing, able to go anywhere and do anything that an experienced human driver can do. While fully autonomous cars are undergoing testing in several pock-ets of the world, none are yet available to the general public. As of now, commercial use of fully autonomous vehicles have largely been restricted to repetitive missions in limited or mon-itored areas like that of shuttles for airports.A close examination of the barriers in the AV-rollout throws light on the sluggish expansion of the industry which is current-ly growing at a rate of 16% per year1. While most auto play-ers are equipped with hardware that can offer the requisite computational power, a critical roadblock in the full-fledged development of AVs is the absence of essential software to sup-port the hardware. A major problem area that needs resolu-tion, with respect to software, is `object analysis'- a feature that can enable a vehicle to detect an object and recognize what it represents2. The primary challenge in `object analysis' is detec-tion, which can be influenced by sudden physical movements, geographical or weather conditions. Additionally, it would be difficult to achieve a sensor fusion to validate the type and ex-istence of an object because of the types of data that need to be compared by the camera, radar and the Lidar system.Another crucial problem area which needs to be addressed is that of `decision-making systems'. It is imperative for AVs to make spontaneous decisions for a myriad of scenarios and undergo intensive training to mimic human decision-making skills. Categorizing different scenarios and building a database of `if-then' rules for every potential scenario is not feasible with the existing technology. Furthermore, AVs must be equipped with a fail-safe mechanism which lets the car stop without putting the passengers or the people around at risk. However, HAS REALITY PUT THE BRAKES ON AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES? By Sanjeev Varma, Chairman - Altran IndiaVehicles belonging to level 5 do not require human attention and are not even expected to have steering wheels or acceleration/braking pedals. They will be free from geofencing, able to go anywhere and do anything that an experienced human driver can do
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