1. Driverless Car Technology

2. Background “Futurama” built in 1933 by Norman Bel Geddes.
Tsukuba Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, 1977, max. speed of 20 mph.
Mercedes Benz robot van, max. speed of 60 mph, built in 1980.
VaMP and others

3. What Is a Driverless Car?
It is an autonomous vehicle that is capable of fulfilling the human transportation capabilities of a traditional car by sending its environment and navigating on its own. A human may choose a destination, but is not required to perform any mechanical operation of the vehicle.
In other words, it’s just a car that drives by itself.

4. Driverless Car Sub-Systems
Main systems that allow the car to drive on its own:
Sensors and laser scanners
Navigation system
The motion planning
The control system

5. How Sensors Work
There are various sensors installed in the car that work together to recognize mobile (pedestrians, other cars, and motorcycles) and immobile objects (buildings, trees, etc.). Scanners send laser beams around the car and the light is reflected back from its objects on its approximate distance. Laser scanners track everything around the car 10 times per second.

6. Approaches to Driverless Transportation Systems
Fully Autonomous Systems
Pre-Built Infrastructure
Driver Assistance
Fully Autonomous Systems imply an ability of a future car to safely navigate unfamiliar environments and transport people and goods from place to place safely.
Pre-Built Infrastructure Systems make use of existing technologies (such as GPS) to enable driverless car transportation in defined areas.
Driver Assistance technologies make use of small steps in achieving a fully automated driverless vehicle.

7. Who Is Working On The Driverless Car Technology?
Artificial Intelligence Group of the Free University Berlin. Professor Raul Rojas (predict 30 to 40 years before these cars become available to regular consumers)
Google. Professor Sebastian Thrun
General Motors (predict to introduce a car in the market by 2018)
And others
There are many others who are working on this technology.

8. “Made In Germany” Or “MIG” Volkswagen Passat Worth $551,800
Built-in lots of special technology
Drive on its own
Accident free

10. Google’s Driverless Car
Toyota Prius
Has about 140,000 miles (California, San Francisco Bay).
Has one accident

11. Advantages of Driverless Car
Fewer car accidents
Allow better traffic flow (tighter packing of vehicles on the road)
Less pollution
Reduced the amount of space required for parking

12. Advantages of Driverless Car
No need to learn how to drive a car
More efficient allocation of time (instead of driving, read, work, relax, etc.)
Young, elderly, disabled can take advantage of this opportunity
Reduce the need for police monitoring and vehicle insurances

13. Disadvantages of Driverless Car Technology
Give up joy of driving
Computerizing human labor (reduce need for workers will increase unemployment rate)
How safe is this technology?
Computer cannot reason and predict human behavior

14. Summary The driverless car is still at the “experimental stage”
The driverless car is illegal in all 50 states.
As an exception, driverless cars now legal in the US State of Nevada (temporarily for tests)

15. Conclusion
The Driverless car technology is definitely a cutting edge technology, but the question is if we are ready for this technology?! Are we ready to trust our lives to computers? May be not now, but soon enough we probably will.

16. References http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP0MWeoKmbg