Self-driving vehicles are becoming a reality, despite the many hurdles to overcome, and these cars can change our world in some unexpected ways.
Late at night in Phoenix, Arizona, under the lights of street lamps, a car can be seen slowly approaching, while its active sensors emit a low beep, and the green and blue letter "W" lights up from the windshield, which gives enough light to see The car from the inside until you finally discover that the driver's seat is completely empty.
The wheels move steadily, stopping when beeps are heard on the phone of the person waiting. When that person opens the door to get into the car, the car's audio system emits a welcoming sound, saying: "Good evening, this car is entirely yours - with no one in front."
This was a Waymo One self-driving taxi, which this person ordered just 10 minutes ago using an app. The open use of this service to the public, which is slowly expanding across the United States, is one of the many developments that indicate that self-driving technology is truly becoming a part of our lives.
Promises of self-driving car technology have always been tempting, especially as it has the potential to transform our experience of commuting and long trips, take people out of high-risk work environments and simplify our industries. They also play an essential role in helping us build the cities of the future, in which our dependence and relationship to cars will be redefined - lowering carbon emissions and paving the way to more sustainable lifestyles. Moreover, this technology can make our travel safer.
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The World Health Organization estimates that more than 1.3 million people die each year as a result of road accidents. “We want safer roads and fewer deaths, which ultimately self-driving cars can provide,” says Camilla Fowler, Head of Automated Transport for the UK Transport Research Laboratory.
But for self-driving technology to become mainstream, a lot of change still needs to be done.
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“Autonomous vehicles should be a very quiet way to get from one place to another,” says David Hynd, Chief Safety and Investigations Scientist at the UK's Transport Research Laboratory. But not every human driver around them will behave this way. These cars should be able to: Dealing with human drivers who drive fast, for example, or break the rules of road traffic."
And this is not the only challenge, many things must be reorganized, rethinking highway law, public perception, improving the infrastructure of our streets, towns and cities, as well as the big problem of ultimate liability for road accidents.
“The entire insurance industry is looking at how to deal with this change of who is responsible for the accident and which car does it,” says Richard Jenks, vice president of commerce at Oxfordshire-based driverless software company Oxpotica.
The ultimate vision experts are working on is fully autonomous vehicles, whether within industry, broader transportation networks, or personal-use vehicles, that can be deployed and used anywhere around the world.
But with all these obstacles in place, what will the next 10 years hold for self-driving vehicles?
The biggest obstacle for those in the self-driving car technology industry is how to get cars to operate safely and effectively in complex and unpredictable human environments. The biggest focus over the next two years will be on how to solve this part of the puzzle.
Experts are working on this at the University of Michigan's M-City Test Facility, which is the world's first purpose-built testing ground for self-driving vehicles. Undergrounds, building facades, tree covers, homes, and an outdoor garage to test vehicles' access to their designated areas, and different terrains, such as roads, footpaths, railroad tracks, and road markings that vehicles must handle.
In this environment, experts test the most difficult scenarios for the most experienced drivers, from seeing children playing in the street to two cars trying to pass first at an intersection at the same time.
“In order to test self-driving car technology like this, it depends on hundreds of different variables in any given situation,” says Nikmi Ozai, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Michigan. Solving this problem requires the formation of a group of diverse thinkers.
"We're trying to bring in people from different parts of the university - not just engineers, but we've got people from different disciplines like psychology, more people interacting between humans and machines, because there are a lot of angles to this problem that we're trying to solve in terms of safety," Ozai adds. .
At this facility, Ozai and her team can test different traffic scenarios, as well as explore how self-driving vehicles communicate with each other, while keeping vehicle and personal data safe from hackers.
Self-driving taxis are already on the roads in Phoenix, Arizona, due to a lengthy testing process like that of Ozai's team. At the moment, this is only available as a test service to the public in selected small areas, but there are a number of plans over the next two years to allow self-driving taxis on a larger and wider scale.
US-based company Waymo, for example, is currently working on new test sites in the city, which means that self-driving taxis could realistically operate in San Francisco and New York by 2023. But the co-CEO The company, Tekedra Mawakana, has been wary about talking about the service and its whereabouts because "safety takes time," he said.
AutoX, a startup funded by Alibaba, launched a fully self-driving taxi service in Shanghai, China in 2020. By 2023, the service will likely be available in other cities across China, as well as in California.
Moreover, most of the autonomous driving technology already in use is already in industrial environments, such as mines, warehouses and ports, but Hynd believes that within the next two years we can expect this technology to be used in the latter part of goods and services journeys - the point at which the goods are delivered. and consumer-to-consumer services – such as self-driving heavy-duty trucks on highways, or even delivery vehicles for groceries.
Apple says it aims to launch fully self-driving electric cars four years from now, but industry experts are more cautious about what the near future holds.
Fowler says one of the new places where self-driving technology can spread is in high-risk environments, such as nuclear plants and military places, to reduce risks to human life. A Rio Tinto mine in Western Australia, for example, currently operates the world's largest autonomous fleet, and the trucks are controlled by a central system miles away in Perth.
“If you can get people out of that and rely on fully autonomous vehicles that are powered by the technology, and if you have someone who can remotely control those vehicles in this very dangerous environment, that would be very good,” Fowler says.
Beyond these industries, Ozai also predicts that "it's likely that we'll see lighter, self-driving vehicles that can run on sidewalks and bike paths at limited speeds — to deliver things like food and groceries."
When it comes to public transportation, Oxpotica is working with Germany-based vehicle systems company ZF over the next five years to make autonomous shuttle buses available in European cities, so that they run on roads, as well as at airports. The same way regular buses operate at the moment.
All experts agree that the next seven years will depend on the successes and failures of initial deployments of autonomous vehicles, and how safety and public confidence in the technology evolve accordingly.
However, most people hope that redesigning cities will lead to the adoption of this technology to help us transition to modern and more efficient ways of living.
“If you live in a crowded metropolitan area, the hope is that you can count on mobility as a service,” says Hynd. Which will make the streets more suitable for automated, self-driving vehicles."
Despite all the advancements and innovations that the next decade is likely to see, some experts still feel that we may be far from fully relying on autonomous vehicles. Ozai says she does not expect that by 2031 humans will be fully dependent on self-driving cars in all possible circumstances, such as putting children alone in a car to send them anywhere without worrying.