By Roshan Maharana Levels of Driving Automation in Vehicles
In SAE’s automation level definitions, “driving mode” means “a type of driving scenario with characteristic dynamic driving task requirements (e.g., expressway merging, high speed cruising, low speed traffic jam, closed-campus operations, etc.)”
- Level 0: Automated system issues warnings and may momentarily intervene but has no sustained vehicle control.
- Level 1 (“hands on”): The driver and the automated system share control of the vehicle. Examples are Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), where the driver controls steering and the automated system controls speed; and Parking Assistance, where steering is automated while speed is under manual control. The driver must be ready to retake full control at any time. Lane Keeping Assistance (LKA) Type II is a further example of level 1 self-driving.
- Level 2 (“hands off”): The automated system takes full control of the vehicle (accelerating, braking, and steering). The driver must monitor the driving and be prepared to intervene immediately at any time if the automated system fails to respond properly. The shorthand “hands off” is not meant to be taken literally. In fact, contact between hand and wheel is often mandatory during SAE 2 driving, to confirm that the driver is ready to intervene.
- Level 3 (“eyes off”): The driver can safely turn their attention away from the driving tasks, e.g. the driver can text or watch a movie. The vehicle will handle situations that call for an immediate response, like emergency braking. The driver must still be prepared to intervene within some limited time, specified by the manufacturer, when called upon by the vehicle to do so. As an example, the 2018 Audi A8 Luxury Sedan was the first commercial car to claim to be capable of level 3 self-driving. This particular car has a so-called Traffic Jam Pilot. When activated by the human driver, the car takes full control of all aspects of driving in slow-moving traffic at up to 60 kilometres per hour (37 mph). The function works only on highways with a physical barrier separating one stream of traffic from oncoming traffic.
- Level 4 (“mind off”): As level 3, but no driver attention is ever required for safety, i.e. the driver may safely go to sleep or leave the driver’s seat. Self-driving is supported only in limited spatial areas (geo-fenced) or under special circumstances, like traffic jams. Outside of these areas or circumstances, the vehicle must be able to safely abort the trip, i.e. park the car, if the driver does not retake control.
- Level 5 (“steering wheel optional”): No human intervention is required at all. An example would be a robotic taxi.
How they work
Various self-driving technologies have been developed by Google, Uber, Tesla, Nissan, and other major automakers, researchers, and technology companies.
While design details vary, most self-driving systems create and maintain an internal map of their surroundings, based on a wide array of sensors, like radar. Uber’s self-driving prototypes use sixty-four laser beams, along with other sensors, to construct their internal map; Google’s prototypes have, at various stages, used lasers, radar, high-powered cameras, and sonar.
Software then processes those inputs, plots a path, and sends instructions to the vehicle’s “actuators,” which control acceleration, braking, and steering. Hard-coded rules, obstacle avoidance algorithms, predictive modelling, and “smart” object discrimination (i.e. knowing the difference between a bicycle and a motorcycle) help the software follow traffic rules and navigate obstacles.
Partially-autonomous vehicles may require a human driver to intervene if the system encounters uncertainty; fully-autonomous vehicles may not even offer a steering wheel.
Self-driving cars can be further distinguished as being “connected” or not, indicating whether they can communicate with other vehicles and/or infrastructure, such as next generation traffic lights. Most prototypes do not currently have this capability.
Modern Technologies used in self-driving cars
- Artificial Intelligence- Artificial Intelligence changes in-vehicle infotainment systems in a major way. Because of this trend, the demand for high quality hardware and software solutions has also soared because they all must be compatible with AI. In the infotainment category, you can expect a spike in features like speech recognition, eye tracking, monitoring driving, gesture recognition, and database of natural languages. Eventually, this will also go a step further to consider driver condition evaluation, camera-attached machine vision systems, sensor fusion engine control units and radar-based detection units. There are infotainment human machine interfaces already attached to vehicles and this can monitor and act according to the algorithms collected from cloud-based neural networks. This would then be used to perform advanced tasks.
- Internet Of Things(IOT)- The internet of things (IoT) is a computing concept that describes the idea of everyday physical objects being connected to the internet and being able to identify themselves to other devices.
They can be useful in intelligent transport system in the following ways: -
- Electronic Smart Toll Collections
- Smart Parking
- Energy Conservation: Smart street & Traffic lighting
- Post Event Diagnostics
- Intelligent Traffic Control with priority for emergency vehicles
Another advantage of cloud-based computing in vehicles relates to a driver’s financial investment and a car’s insurance value. With fewer expensive data storage elements in the vehicle, engineers might be able to decrease the cost of our increasingly computerized cars.
As more autonomous vehicles enter the scene, big data will only get bigger and consequently the potential for autonomous technology will rise, resulting in a vastly more data-centric automotive industry.
This sums up pretty much all the technologies that are involved in making cars self driving. In our next article, we shall explore the field of automobiles as a career opportunity and the relevant skills needed.
Originally published at https://blog.isavit.club.
