Will autonomous driving ever happen?

AI is often described as the most transformative technology of the century and while already reshaping many aspects of life, by scientific discovery to WarThe advertising campaign and excessive promotion remain. One of the boldest promises is the arrival of self-guiding cars. We are told that accidents will disappear, traffic will facilitate and algorithms will lead us to orbit while moving our foods. But is it really going to happen?

Despite promises and deadlines (the list of lost forecasts on the issue by Tesla Elon Musk’s boss has his own her own wikipedia page), automakers failed to get vehicles with high -level autonomy On the road to numbers. And the jurisdictions where regulatory authorities have stated that they were satisfied for vehicles to fully drive a few and far away.

So will it ever happen? Or is the vision of a complete-autonomous future driving just a complex ruse designed to feed the advertising campaign and increase the value of the large technological stock?

What is the situation of the game today?

The scheduled dates for the arrival of truly autonomous vehicles, known as level 5 autonomy and capable of operating without human intervention, have come and left.

It is rather fair to say that progress was slower than some of the most excited commentators waited. But progress has been made and continues to be noted.

Probably the biggest success so far has been the operational development of Robotia – the autonomous taxis – from a number of operators, to several cities around the world. This includes Waymo, which belongs to Google Parent Alphabet, which operates in US cities, such as Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Waymo gets the passengers 250,000 trips Every week and just announced plans to build a factory that will produce 2,000 vehicles per year.

In China, Baidu and Pony services operate in cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai.

One of the greatest success storiesHowever, it is a WERIDE. It has been out of work at Baidu’s autonomous driving unit, Weride has completed the first robot test on Guangzhou in 2000, since then, it has been escalating and now producing autonomous trucks known as Robovans, self-riding service robots in France and Robo Sweepers in Single.

What about private autonomous passenger vehicles? Well, there, progress was a little slower.

No company has yet been given the necessary licenses to allow fully autonomous vehicles on public roads in the US or anywhere else.

Tesla markets automatic pilot technology as Complete self-guidance betaBut it still requires a fully careful human meeting on the driving seat, which means that it does not meet the bar of complete autonomy.

However, it is becoming more and more common for vehicles to operate at lower levels of autonomy. Mercedes became the first one The automotive industry to obtain approval for a Level 3 Vehicle 3 to operate in the US in 2023.

Other car manufacturers, including Ford and GM, are increasingly increasing the advanced characteristics of driver help with aspects of autonomy, such as driving with the hands-free highway and the lane change.

These less glittering but more achievements (not to mention legally) violations of autonomous driving play an important role, allowing manufacturers to gradually automate, evaluating the impact and influence on the behavior of new features, before proceeding to automate.

Pavements

So what does the autonomous cars stop from becoming the daily reality we have promised?

Well, street obstacles are a mix of technical, regulatory and social.

Starting with technology, there are still security concerns after a number fatal accidents While driving under supervisory autonomous conditions. Statistically, per mile, stand -alone driving is already safer than human driving, according to Waymo’s survey. However, there are concerns that autonomous driving systems are still not capable of dealing with unexpected and marginal situations, such as the treatment of extremely irregular human drivers.

In fact, experts like Lex Fridman, author of MIT Operational Vehicle Technology StudyThey have said that it may be decades before technology is sufficiently developed to completely resolve the challenges of autonomous driving in busy, built -in areas.

In some cases, progress has been slowed due to the exploitation they have withdrawn from their licenses due to accidents. This happened in the case of GM cruise, which had recalled California’s licenses an accident in which a pedestrian was pulled along a road.

In terms of regulation, only a few US states have given licenses for autonomous cars and they have switched to vehicles that operate as fleets and not as individuals, which means that they can be strictly monitored and controlled in areas.

But possibly the greatest challenge will persuade people to really get into autonomous cars. According to Research by AAAOnly 13 % of American citizens are ready to trust a car with self-leading. Although low, this number represents an increase from nine percent last year, so people could (slowly) come to the idea.

The road ahead

When it comes to getting self-driving on the road, some things, such as geographical roboting services, the level two and three autonomous features in private cars, seem to work quite well.

But the dream of autonomy five, where we can put our feet or maybe even cover sleep, as we are full of the whole city, remains unclear.

And the automakers clearly have some way to go when it comes to the audience’s victory.

Will we get there? I would say yes, probably.

Progress seems to be heading, slowly but certainly, in this direction. The recruitment will be heterogeneous and without a doubt biased in technology cities (you think closeness to major research centers such as Silicon Valley and Shenzhen), with progressive regulatory environments.

But car manufacturers, AI developers, legislators and the general public have everything to play to determine if self-guiding cars will become a daily reality for everyone.