Technology changing so fast in every field of life and things if those are mobile phones, laptops, home appliances or “CARS”. Competition has risen everywhere so does every company is trying to invent or introduce something new to customers, same is happening in the world of automobiles. What could be new in vehicles? And how can company survive in future? As every car is already fast, powerful, comfortable and stylish but there is still something that is yet not achieved fully and that is autonomous and driver less ride. All of us are well aware that whenever there arrives any new technology it introduces both negative and positive aspects that produce great impact on human beings; best example easy to understand is use of smart phones that are helpful and time consuming at the same time. Important thing is we cannot leave every single technology with fear of being captured or fallen within it but we have to understand and make better both our lives and technology, Discussion here is about autonomous vehicle let’s try to understand it first.

What is autonomous Vehicle/Car?

Most easy and understandable definition of autonomous vehicle is a car that can guide itself without intervention or direct intervention of human because indirectly humans are already involve in everything. Sometimes this autonomous vehicle called with many other names like driver less vehicle, robot car/vehicle, self driving vehicle but all these names has clear differences in some aspects lets understand this first.

Driver less Vehicle/Car:

Driver less car cannot be called autonomous because driver less car can be controlled using equipment like mobile where autonomous vehicle control itself.

Robot Vehicle/Car:

Original meaning of robot is a machine that is capable of carrying out complex series of task automatically for which it is being programmed where autonomous is a different word which include understanding of environment and making decision accordingly which is near to artificial intelligence where all robot are not artificial intelligent.

Self Driving Vehicle/Car:

Self driving car is much near to autonomous vehicle but calling it a complete autonomous will not be a right selection. Self driving car can be the one that travels on predefined paths and can reach only predefined destinations, for example  a train without driver can also called self driving train because it move/travels on predefined paths for predefined locations.

Autonomous Vehicle/Car:

Autonomous vehicle is totally different because it works using different techniques including radars, laser lights, odometry, GPS, computer vision with many sensors. Advance control system being installed in vehicle to decode information collected by sensors or other technologies to navigate on appropriate path by avoiding different obstacles and weather conditions. This is still not full artificial intelligence system as it dependent on GPS and what if there is no GPS??

After understanding the major Differences let find out negative and positive aspects of autonomous vehicles.

Positive aspects:

  • These will be more comfortable vehicles that will use virtual stops with door to door delivery.
  • These will be safer because of fewer accidents.
  • There will be less pollution and congestion on roads as most of the vehicles will be hybrid, electric and smaller in size (electric car uses motors instead of engine).
  • There will be no need to drive car just have to sit and enjoy the ride.
  • There will be fewer crashes because no human error will involve like drink driving, phone call, carelessness and bad driving.
  • There will be no need to clear driving test but test related to system awareness could be there.
  • It will be fast traveling because of less accidents, less braking, and smooth flow.

Negative Aspects:

  • There are maximum chances that this will be provided as service instead of ownership as “UBER” is already doing.
  • Humans will be lazier and less attentive to their surroundings.
  • As autonomous vehicles will be dependent on control units, computing power, codes and wireless communications so there will be maximum chances of being hacked and control by some other entity that can make it refuse to start, crash and even can exploit the privacy of customers with financial threats.
  • There will be need to define new laws for autonomous vehicles that will take much more to become perfect.
  • How will autonomous vehicle tackle pedestrian, cyclist and other cars with drivers still an important question?
  • What will happen to old cars running in different countries for the world and how autonomous vehicles replace such large number of vehicles?
  • What will happen to people who earn by driving taxis, trucks and buses?
  • One last and most important question how will UN educated people tackle the autonomous cars as it require high understanding of system when they can’t even use android?
  • There will be many more questions with passage of time that will require logical answers.

Arrival of autonomous Vehicles:

Estimations by Automobiles manufacturers are that first automated vehicle will hit markets in between 2020-2025.