>DESCRIPTION:
Google Self-driving Cars are developed by Google [X] as part of its project to develop technology for mainly electric cars.
A Self-driving car (driver-less car, unmanned car, autonomous car, robotic car) is a vehicle that is capable of sensing its environment and navigating without human supervision or input. These modern cars are incorporated with finest features which allow them to operate autonomously.
Autonomous and unmanned technology is emerging gradually but continually, with new opportunities for its employment likely to follow in almost every industry which are involve in vehicle manufacturing like Ford, BMW, Audi etc.
Despite of the fact that this technology is emerging but autonomous and unmanned vehicles involve a transfer of control from direct human input to automated or self-control. This has implications for the determination of liability in the event of an incident, and will be a key factor in the pricing and risk transfer.
>MISSION:
According to Jennifer Haroon (Head of Business Operations - Google[X]):
“Our mission is to improve people’s life by transforming ability, and when we talk about transforming ability, one of the main part of that is “Safety”
>HISTORY:
The vision behind the Google Autonomous Cars was began as early as the 1939 New York World’s Fair where visitors were presented a vision of automated cars.
Another concept behind the “Google Driver-less Car” is the advertise from 1950’s showing a family on route trip.
>BEGINNING:
Numerous major companies and research organizations have developed working prototype autonomous vehicles, including Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, Continental Automotive Systems, IAV, Autoliv Inc., Bosch, Nissan, Renault, Toyota, Audi, Volvo, Tesla Motors, Peugeot, AKKA Technologies, Vislab from University of Parma, Oxford University and Google.
The reason behind the popularity of “Google Autonomous Vehicle” is because in May 2014, Google presented a new concept for their driver-less car that had neither a steering wheel nor pedals, and unveiled a fully functioning prototype in December of that year that they planned to test on San Francisco Bay Area roads beginning in 2015.
>TECHNOLOGY:
Google's robotic cars have about $150,000 in equipment. The software installed in Google's cars is named Google Chauffeur as well as including Lasers, Cameras, Radars, and Computing System that makes it into a “Self Driving Vehicle”
>SURVEY:
Expert members of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) have determined that driver-less vehicles will be the most viable form of intelligent transportation. They estimate that up to 75% of all vehicles will be autonomous by 2040.
3. It began as early as the 1939 New York World’s Fair where visitors were
presented a vision of automated cars.
Another concept behind the “Driverless Car” is an advertise from 1950’s
showing a family on route trip. The father in the picture is on traditional driver
seat and he is able to engage with his family while on his trip.
4. The future never looks exactly how we imagined it a few decades ago but the
vision of driver-less car had in “Jetsons Cartoon” of 1960s and “Knight Rider
Movie” of 1980s, where cars drive themselves.
Self-driving cars appeared in countless science fiction movies.
5. According to Jennifer Haroon (Head of Business Operations-Self-driving Cars-Google[X])
“Our mission is to improve people’s life by transforming ability and when we
talk about transforming ability, one of the main part of that is “Safety”
Every one like to drive in:
Nice weather,
Open roads,
Nice scenery
Without getting any disruption.
But unfortunately in reality we often find
ourselves:
Dealing with bad weather,
Driving in bad traffic,
Distracted; either by something in our mind or
by physical objects in our surrounding.
Another aspect of transforming ability is
accessibility to aging & visually impaired
persons, because they are the only ones who
don’t have freedom to drive.
6. Critical Reason
Attributed To
Estimated
Number Percentage
Drivers 2,046,000 94%
Vehicles 44,000 2%
Environment 52,000 2%
Unknown Reasons 47,000 2%
Total 2,189,000 100%
*Percentages are based on estimated surveys.
Deaths from traffic accidents—over 1.2 million worldwide every year.
It could be reduced dramatically, especially since 94% of accidents in the U.S.
involve human error.
“Our mission is to improve people’s life by transforming
ability and when we talk about transforming ability, one of
the main part of that is “Safety”
7. As we discussed that the vision behind the “Driverless Car’ is related to 1939
New York World’s Fair and 1950’s Advertise.
So in 2009, Google started to convert this vision into reality through the self-
driving car project, including team members who had already dedicated years
to the technology.
Google Self-driving Car is an autonomous cars, developed by Google X as part
of its project to develop technology for mainly electric cars.
The project was formerly led by Sebastian Thrun, former director of the
Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and co-inventor of Google Street
View.
Thrun's team at Stanford created the robotic vehicle Stanley which won the
2005 (DARPA) Grand Challenge and its US$2 million prize from the United
States Department of Defense. Now the team consisted of 15 engineers is
working for Google.
8. As a boy Sebestian loved cars. When he turned 18, he lost his best friend in a
car accident.
And then he decided to dedicate his life to saving one million people every
year who lost their lives.
9. Google started its testing drive in 2009 essentially on California
Freeways/Highways with the “Toyota Prius Vehicle”. They added their Sensors
(i.e. Lasers, Cameras, Radars, Computing System) that makes it into a “Self
Driving Vehicle”
10. In 2012, they began testing with “Lexus RX450h Hybrid Vehicle”. At this point
they had completed over 300,000 miles of testing on Freeways.
11. Google realized that freeway testing drives weren’t fully meeting with their
mission. They realized that they weren’t addressing the safety issues on city
streets as well as they weren’t addressing those impaired persons who can’t
drive.
When they start their program, they focused on highway driving because its
pretty straight forward driving and most of the cars on highway are driving on
same direction.
Google’s Driverless Car on highways is just simply stay in it’s lane, moderate it’s
speed according to the objects around it. So they moved their program to the
city streets.
12. In 2013, they shifted their focus to the city streets, a much more complex
environment than freeways.
13. In 2014, they unveiled an early construction of their new prototype vehicle.
A state of art vehicle that is designed to the ground up to be fully self-driving
without any steering, gear, and pedals.
14. Google’s self-driving prototypes rely on their sensors and software to drive
themselves.
Google is working toward vehicles that take you where you want to go at the
push of a button.
They started by adding components to existing cars like our Lexus SUVs, then
they began designing a new prototype from the ground up to better explore
what should go into a fully self-driving vehicle.
They removed the steering wheel and pedals, and instead designed a prototype
that lets the software and sensors handle the driving.
15. SENSORS
Lasers, radars and cameras to
detect objects in all direction.
INTERIOR
Designed for
riding, not for
driving.
ELECTRIC
BATTERIES
To power the
vehicle.
BACK-UP SYSTEMS
For steering, braking,
computing and more.
COMPUTER
Artificial Intelligence,
Designed specifically
for
Self-driving.
ROUNDED SHAPE
Maximizes sensor’s field of
view.
16. 01. LIDAR (360°)
• The most important feature of the
Google’s Car.
• LIDAR (Light Ranging & Detection) is
a rotating camera that send out
lasers.
• It uses the reflected light to build a
3D map of the car’s surroundings up
to a distance of 200m.
03. RADARS
• To keep track of nearby objects.
• Back & front radar measures the
speed of other vehicles.
• To moderate its speed.
05. ULTRA SONIC SENSOR
• It is a position estimator.
• It works along-with GPS.
• To auto-update its position on the map.
06. AERIAL
• To get highly accurate
positioning data.
• To make sure its position.
04. COMPUTER
• To compiled information from all
sensors.
• To adjust the steering, acceleration,
and brakes.
• To understand traffic laws, but also
the unspoken assumptions of road.
02. FRONT CAMERA
• It can read different road signs.
• It can detect traffic lights.
• It can detect cyclist, pedestrians, animals.
• It can detect human gestures.
01
02
03
0405
06
17. It can detect Flash-light of Police Cars, School Buses, Ambulances etc.
It can detect Human Gestures (Such as a Police Officer, if signaling the car to
stop).
It can detect Flying Birds.
It can even detect Animals wandering around roads.
It can detect Construction Signs & different Road Signs.
It can detect Motions of surrounding Vehicles.
On a full charge, it can travel a Range of 100 miles.
The Google’s Self-Driving Cars are limited to a maximum speed of 25 mph
(40 kph).
When your ride is over, the car makes sure that you get all your stuff by
giving you a reminder to not leave any belongings.
The car uses a foam bumper and a flexible windscreen ensuring that, if one
of its cars does bump into something, the damage and harm will be minimal.
18. Our self-driving cars are designed to navigate safely through city streets.
They have sensors designed to detect objects as far as two football fields away
in all directions, including pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles—or even fluttering
plastic shopping bags and rogue birds.
The software processes all the information to help the car safely navigate the
road without getting tired or distracted.
Like any driver, a self-driving car needs to constantly answer these questions.
19. The car processes both map and sensor information to determine where it is in the world. Our car knows
what street it's on and which lane it's in.
Sensors help to detect objects all around us. The software classifies objects based on their size, shape and
movement pattern. It can also detects a cyclist and a pedestrian.
The software predicts what all the objects around us might do next. It predicts that the cyclist will ride by
and the pedestrian will cross the street.
The software then chooses a safe speed and trajectory for the car. Our car nudges away from the cyclist,
then slows down to yield to the pedestrian.
20.
21. Google’s Driverless Car has self-driven over 1 million miles and are currently
out on the streets of Mountain View, CA, Austin, TX and Kirkland, WA.
Their testing fleet includes both modified Lexus SUVs and new prototype
vehicles that are designed from the ground up to be fully self-driving.
There are safety drivers aboard all vehicles for now. They are looking forward to
learning how the community/citizens perceives and interacts with their
driverless car.
22. Google’s Autonomous Vehicles have been involved in more than 12 accidents since the
company began testing them six years ago.
But in all accidents Driverless Car was not found to be at fault. According to Google
officials most of the accidents was happened because of the Driver’s fault in other
vehicles.
A Google Lexus-model Autonomous Vehicle (“Google AV”) was traveling in autonomous
mode Eastbound on El Camino Real in Mountain View in the far right-hand lane.
The Google AV had to come to a stop and go around sandbags positioned around a storm
drain that were blocking its path. When the light turned green, traffic in the lane
continued past the Google AV. After a few cars had passed, the Google AV began to
proceed back into the center of the lane to pass the sand bags.
A public transit bus was approaching from behind. The Google AV test driver saw the bus
approaching in the left side mirror but believed the bus would stop or slow to allow the
Google AV to continue.
Approximately three seconds later, as the Google AV was re-entering the center of the
lane it made contact with the side of the bus. The Lexus smacked into the side of the bus
at low speed, damaging its front fender, wheel and sensor in the process.
The Google AV was operating in autonomous mode and traveling at less than 2 mph, and
the bus was travelling at about 15 mph at the time of contact. There were no injuries
reported at the scene.
23. As of July 2015, Google's 23 self-driving cars have been involved in 14 minor
collisions on public roads, but Google maintains that in all cases the vehicle
itself was not at fault because the cars were either being manually driven or the
driver of another vehicle was at fault.
In July 2015, three Google employees suffered minor injuries when the self-
driving car they were riding in was rear-ended by a car whose driver failed to
brake at a traffic light. This was the first time that a self-driving car collision
resulted in injuries.
24. In 2012, at the signing ceremony for California’s autonomous vehicles law
Google founder Sergey Brin stated that Google Self-Driving car will be available
for the general public by 2017-2020.
As of August 28, 2014 the latest prototype has not been tested in heavy rain or
snow due to safety concerns. Because the cars rely primarily on pre-
programmed route data, they do not obey temporary traffic lights.
The vehicle has difficulty identifying when objects, such as trash and light
debris, are harmless, causing the vehicle to change direction unnecessarily.
Additionally, the LIDAR technology cannot spot some potholes.
Google said that all these issues will be fixed by 2020.
Within 2013 Google plans to expand the number and users of their driverless
cars to Google employees. Thereafter it will not take longer than 5 years to get
the cars into the market.
Google trying to get permit/license to operate its Autonomous Vehicle in
different states.
25. There would be fewer accidents, as human error would be nullified.
It would be accessible to anyone. Children, senior citizens, visually-impaired or other impaired
citizens. This would allow the passenger to be at ease from the tasks of driving.
Redundant drivers would be eliminated. As the car can drive itself to wherever it is required, there
would no longer be the need for a driver to perform the specific chore of transporting another
individual.
Parking scarcity would also be resolved, as the car could drop off passengers, park far away and
then return to pick them up whenever it is required.
There would be a reduced need for road signage, as the car would receive information
electronically through signals.
There would also be a better management of traffic flow, which would be monitored over a
controlled system.
Reduction in the need for traffic police and premium on vehicle insurance.
26. Firstly, car enthusiasts would most certainly disagree to give up driving their own vehicle. To many,
driving a car means much more than reaching a simple destination, as it seems to be reduced to
when adopting autonomous cars.
Who will be held responsible in case of accident. Companies, Devices or their Software developers?
It would be an economic disaster, if autonomous cars were implemented everywhere. Job
losses would be monumental, as there would no longer be a need for professional drivers, such as
cab and lorry drivers.
Autonomous cars would be much more expensive to buy because of costly equipment's.
Autonomous vehicles rely heavily on GPS satellites. If a signal were to be blocked, this would affect
the cars functionality. Hackers can also hack the system.
Finally, autonomous vehicles are still undergoing research and can’t be trusted to operate without
error, until further advances are made.
Software reliability, because software of companies will be different, therefore different
autonomous car by different manufacturers may function differently.
Self-driving cars could potentially be loaded with explosives and used as bombs by terrorists.
27. Self-driving taxis will be mostly electric which reduces
carbon emissions (approximately 25% less emissions
compared to internal combustion engine).
Self-driving urban taxis will be smaller and much lighter
than the average car which further reduces energy
consumption per kilometer.
“Self-Driving Cars will be a potent weapon to combat climate change”.
28. Expert members of the Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) have
determined that driverless vehicles will be the
most viable form of intelligent transportation.
They estimate that up to 75% of all vehicles will
be autonomous by 2040.
29. Terrafugia is derived from the Latin for “Escape the Earth”
Folding wings and comprehensive
aviation & automotive safety features
make the Transition safe and legal both
in the air and on the ground.
Prototypes have been built and flown,
and production is scheduled to begin
after testing is completed.
Terrafugia's vision for the future of
personal transportation, the TF-X is a
semi-autonomous four-seat hybrid
electric flying car with vertical takeoff
and landing capabilities.
The TF-X will be released several years
after testing, and will bring a new level
of freedom.
30. The Skycar family of vehicles include versions for 2, 4, or 6 persons. Capable of
vertical take-off and landing similar to a helicopter, and flies from point of departure
to destination much like an airplane.
The Skycar has been designed to also travel at low speed for short distances on the
ground like an automobile. It has fold-up wings which make it narrow enough to be
usable on roadways.
All this and, incredibly, it's easy to fly!
Moller International has developed the first and only feasible and affordable
personal vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) vehicles.