AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES
Autonomous vehicles are expected to be worth up to US $ 1.3tn when it comes to cost / timesaving benefits , but the road to full automation may not be smooth
WRITTEN BY : MARCUS LAW
Since the introduction of what most would consider to be modern cruise control in the late 1940s , driving has become increasingly automated . Modern vehicles can slow and stop in reaction to other vehicles around them , stay in lane and even drive for short distances without a guiding hand on the steering wheel .
But , up to this point , true automation has eluded a market valued at approximately US $ 25bn last year , with the holy grail – level 5 automation – still seemingly in the distance .
SAE , the Society of Automotive Engineers , determines vehicles ' intelligence level and automation capabilities , ranking from 0 to 5 . The most widespread autonomous systems , such as Tesla ’ s autopilot software , fall into level 2 or 3 .
While level 3 vehicles can make informed decisions for themselves such as overtaking slower-moving vehicles , they still require human override when the machine is unable to execute the task at hand or the system fails .
The key difference between level 3 and level 4 automation is that vehicles in the latter category are able to intervene themselves if things go wrong or there is a system failure . In this sense , these cars are left completely to their own devices without any human intervention in the vast majority of situations – although the option to manually override does remain in difficult or preferable circumstances .
This is where level 5 automation comes in . Level 5 autonomous vehicles ( AVs ) lack typical driving controls such as steering wheels or pedals , with the traditional role of the driver eliminated completely .