Autonomous Cars Autonomous Vehicles Unmanned Aircraft Pilotless Aircraft Global Hawk X47
Autonomous (driverless) vehicles are not new, as a matter of fact they have been around for about 40 years. It has only been with the advent of precision GPS and high speed computer processors, have the systems become truly viable.
One only has to look back over the many developments in guided weapons technology, from self guiding missiles through to drone aircraft, through to the Global Hawk and other aircraft, most recent the X47, an autonomous space vehicle.
These aircraft can fly and land themselves with no input from an operator. Early developments of this equipment was based around Remote Operation, where an operator sat in a building and controlled the vehicle remote through radios, think of a model aircraft only larger.
This type of system was great as long as you had radio contact with the vehicle, if you lost radio contact the aircraft would fly on without and control until it crashed. Early autonomy was based around computers controlling the aircraft in flight, this was a variation of the auto pilots fitted to aircraft for years, once the remote pilot had the aircraft in the air the autopilot could be engage and the aircraft would fly itself to its location.
This type of system was cheap and relatively easy to operate, but the problems arose such as wind conditions, evasive action, retargeting, etc, plus there was the need to constantly keep a pilot in a chair for the duration of the journey.
Now a very high level of full automation has been achieved by the military and civilian companies in the defence and surveillance, the civilian organisations have looked at the work and decided it is time to get a Peace Dividend from this technology.
It comes as no surprise then, that Google has been involved in the study of autonomous cars. Autonomous cars are a natural progression of the technology, but one that is fraught with both opportunities and risks. NASA has been an operator of Autonomous vehicles for years in planetary exploration, but it is easier driving on the moon and Mars, as it is unlikely that cross traffic will cause problems. No busy Martian mother will be trying to juggle 50 things and pick up the kids from school and drive into the Mars Rover, a Martian Businessman fueled by a liquid lunch, is unlikely to crash into the Rover when trying to make a turn.
While there is great potential for Autonomous Cars, its full potential, to save lives and make driving available to everyone (even those who can’t drive), all cars would need to be under the control of computers that are communicating constantly with each other, so that every vehicle knows what each other car is doing.
Emergency situations can be communicated to all cars instantly and all cars would be doing the same thing.
While this would be very useful on freeways and well known open roads, there needs to be huge improvements in sensor technology, so a car can identify what is a hazard, as how best to react.
We are still a long way from Autonomous Cars on every read and used in daily business, but the longer companies like Google can gather data and develop solutions bring the Autonomous Car closer each day. It will start with buses and public transport and will eventually be used by everyone, but like all great inventions initial adoption will be slow, but people will one day wonder, how we ever did without it.
