The engineers and car companies have been trying to build such vehicles for many years now. The very first attempt at the concept was made in 1939 by Norman Bel Geddes which later became a reality in 1958. The generation of electromagnetic fields which could be controlled was the main concept behind these self-driving vehicles. A lot of things were improved in this by Japanese in 1977 and that mainly included system of cameras for image formation and processing. After many years, the Germans tried their hand at the improvement and building of such car by modifying and changing technology forms. With the improvement in technology the chances of humans building a self-driving vehicles also improved and expanded with many folds.
Technology used in self-driving cars
The engineers all around the world have been working on the main technology behind such vehicles. There have been many changes in the concepts and technologies used since the very firm attempt and concept. It seems there is not one technology but many of them are likely to be involved in order to build secure self-driving cars and with time those technologies can be improved, improvised, modified and altered to build such vehicles. According to drprix auto category, the technologies involved today in order to build the self-driving cars include different and secure algorithms, most sensitive sensors, processing and prediction of the actions of other drivers, taking immediate and secure actions, safety, eco-friendly, and probably an ability to think like a human mind.
Difficulties in building self-driving cars
Such concepts and visions of building this vehicles which would completely depend on technology has its own difficulties and problems. The samples of those that different companies have built till now lacks the perfection and engineers are facing difficulties building it. Companies like Ford, Tesla, Google, and many others, are involved in building self-driving cars. While testing the self-driving vehicle of Uber, two of the drivers lost their lives. This seemed to happen when the vehicles were being tested for their technologies. The drivers did not have their attention on the car but it was somewhere else.
The self-driving cars are meant to handle everything on their own, especially when the driver is distracted but unfortunately, those have not been built with such capabilities. The difficulty is occurring in giving those vehicles the ability to think like a human in different situations, predict and process what the other driver’s actions will be in different situations.
Limitations
The machines that humans are building still need a human mind or body to operate it. It has also been observed that in order to build such cars, a lot of money, mind consumption, time and much more improved technology is needed which is certainly limiting the production of self-driving cars. Another limitation is their cost. The affordability is another of the limitations that it is facing. Some of the users and investors have raised privacy concerns of such vehicles as they would solely be working on name, location and credit card number if payment is to be paid in case of cabs.
Conclusion
With all the work in the past and present on self-driving cars it can be easily concluded that humans can make them but they still have a lot of work to do on it. The cars which have been built with the help of technologies introduced by engineers and researchers are only semi-self-driving cars. This means that such cars still need a human driver to operate them and the humans cannot totally rely on it; they cannot sit back and enjoy the rides without paying attention. They are much in demand but humans have not been able to build a totally dependent and safe self-driving car till now. This cannot be denied that the future of such cars is near.