- Autonomous Vehicles - Home
- Autonomous Vehicles - Introduction
- Autonomous Vehicles - Types
- Autonomous Vehicles - Needs
- Autonomous Vehicles - Advantages
- Autonomous Vehicles - Possible Impact
- Autonomous Vehicles - Levels of Autonomy
- Autonomous Vehicles - Technology
- Autonomous Vehicles - Risks
- Autonomous Vehicles - Applications
Autonomous Vehicles - Introduction
Introduction to Autonomous Vehicles
Autonomous Vehicles are modern vehicles or cars that can drive with minimal or no human intervention. Such vehicles are also termed as self-driving vehicles, or self-driving cars, or robocars.
For self-driving, autonomous vehicles use modern tools and technologies like smart sensors, cameras, artificial intelligence, machine learning, etc. These components and technologies allow the vehicles to see, feel, and understand their surroundings and perform important functions like driving, braking, steering, etc. autonomously.
The primary objective of developing autonomous vehicles is to make driving more comfortable and safer.
In this introductory chapter on autonomous vehicles, we will learn the fundamentals of autonomous vehicles and their importance and impact in transportation industry.
What is an Autonomous Vehicle?
An autonomous vehicle is a car or any other vehicle that can drive on its own, without any human driver's intervention. These vehicles use sensors, cameras, and AI technologies to interpret their surroundings.
Autonomous vehicles are capable in performing all driving functions, from steering to speed control and braking, autonomously according to the traffic conditions on roads. An autonomous vehicle is basically a combination of a traditional car and smart technologies.
These vehicles make the driving comfortable and safer, and reduce the road accidents significantly.
Architecture of Autonomous Vehicle
The architectural block diagram of an autonomous vehicle is shown in the following figure −
In this block diagram, we can see that an autonomous vehicle consists of several components that work together and allow the vehicle to understand its surroundings, make decisions, and control the vehicle navigation. Each component of this typical autonomous vehicle is explained here −
Sensors
Sensors are nothing but components that capture data about vehicles surrounding environment. They detect and measure position and size of nearby objects, road conditions, traffic density, etc. Sensors act as the eyes and ears of the autonomous vehicle and allow the vehicle to see and feel its environment.
The most commonly used sensors in autonomous vehicles include cameras, LiDAR, RADAR, ultrasonic sensors, GPS, etc. The sensed data is then sent to the perception unit for interpretation.
Perception Unit
This component of autonomous vehicles is responsible for processing and analyzing the sensors data. It basically interprets the surrounding environment of the vehicle and allows the vehicle to detect obstacles, recognize road signs, identify road conditions, understand lane markings, etc.
Therefore, the perception unit creates an exact view of the surrounding that helps the vehicle to make driving plans and take decisions.
Planning and Decision Module
This module uses information provided by the perception unit to make path plans and decisions. It performs functions like path planning by finding the best route, avoiding obstacles, decision-making for self and safe driving, etc.
Planning and decision module also uses external data from maps, GPS, user, etc. to make right decisions about steering, acceleration, braking, etc.
Motion and Vehicle Control Unit
This component converts the instructions received from the planning and decision module into physical actions to control the vehicles operation. It works by sending commands to actuators to perform functions like steering, acceleration, braking, etc.
Actuators
Actuators are the components that control the physical actions of the vehicle like acceleration, turning the wheels, stopping the car, etc. These actions are performed as per the commands received from the motion and vehicle control unit.
Supervision System
This component is responsible for monitoring or supervising the entire vehicle system. It ensures that all other components of the autonomous vehicle are functioning as desired.
It performs functions like system diagnostics, failure or malfunctioning prevention, continuous monitoring, etc.
How Do Autonomous Vehicles Work?
Autonomous vehicles use advanced technologies like smart sensors, artificial intelligence, etc. to operate and navigate, without any human intervention. These advanced technologies are developed using huge amount of data from GPS, maps, image processing, etc.
Technologies like machine learning and neural networks are used to determine the patterns in this data that allow autonomous vehicles to understand their surroundings.
Autonomous vehicles collect information using sensors like LiDAR, RADAR, cameras, GPS, etc. to recognize the elements and objects present in their surroundings like other vehicles, road signs, obstacles, traffic lights, road lanes, etc.
Using this data, vehicles create a map of their surroundings and plan the paths by identifying and selecting safest and fastest route to the destination. Some more advanced autonomous vehicles use a technology named, geofencing, to create virtual boundaries with GPS and to ensure that the vehicle will stay within the safe driving area.
Features of Autonomous Vehicles
The following are some key features of autonomous vehicles available in the market −
- Autonomous vehicles provide hands-free steering that can center the car without drivers intervention.
- Autonomous vehicles have adaptive cruise control (ACC) that can automatically maintain a safe distance between vehicle and the vehicle in front of it.
- Many autonomous vehicles support geofencing that keep the vehicle within a safe lane area.
- Autonomous vehicles also have a self-parking feature that can automatically steer, accelerate, and guide the vehicle using sensors to operate it in a parking space.
- Autonomous vehicles have a lane-change assistant that monitors the surrounding traffic of the vehicle and helps in a safe lane change.
- Autonomous vehicles also have an automatic emergency braking (AEB) system to detect imminent collisions and stop the vehicle to prevent accidents.
Conclusion
In this chapter, we explained in detail the basic meaning, structure, and the working of a typical autonomous vehicle. Lets move to the next chapter and discuss the different types of autonomous vehicles.