Mane Engineering Issue 9 - January 2018 | Page 8

Where are we with autonomous cars?

12

Since the first car hit the roads

in the 1800’s, we have envisioned a life with

self-driving cars. Futuristic films show self-driving cars whizzing through busy cities effortlessly and we've been anticipating this as reality for quite some time. Research into this vision was divided into two group, those who wanted the roads to be the smart entity which would guide cars and those who sought to make cars clever and able to be aware of their surroundings without the need of a human driver. There have been huge advances in the field of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs). Google’s fully AVs have driven more than 500, 000 miles without collision. They have developed advanced sensors which gather information about the world and use sophisticated algorithms to make sense of the collected data, all of which is done in real-time.

This process is also known as a “sense

8 | MANE AUTOMOTIVE, F1 & MOTORSPORT | JANUARY 2018