Self-Driving Cars and Autonomous Vehicles Resources

A SELF-DRIVING CAR, also known as a robot car, autonomous car, or driverless car, is a vehicle that is capable of sensing its environment and moving with little or no human input.

Autonomous cars combine a variety of sensors to perceive their surroundings, such as radar, computer vision, Lidar, sonar, GPS, odometry and inertial measurement units. Advanced control systems interpret sensory information to identify appropriate navigation paths, as well as obstacles and relevant signage.

Potential benefits include reduced costs, increased safety, increased mobility, increased customer satisfaction and reduced crime. Safety benefits include a reduction in traffic collisions, resulting injuries and related costs, including for insurance. Automated cars are predicted to increase traffic flow; provide enhanced mobility for children, the elderly, disabled, and the poor; relieve travelers from driving and navigation chores; lower fuel consumption; significantly reduce needs for parking space; reduce crime; and facilitate business models for transportation as a service, especially via the sharing economy.

Problems include safety, technology, liability, desire by individuals to control their cars, legal framework and government regulations; risk of loss of privacy and security concerns, such as hackers or terrorism; concern about the resulting loss of driving-related jobs in the road transport industry; and risk of increased suburbanization as travel becomes more convenient.

Self-Driving Cars & Autonomous Vehicles News, Reviews & Resources

• 3 Top Driverless Car Stocks - "General Motors, Alphabet, and Aptiv are ushering in an era of transportation that will save hundreds of thousands of lives and potentially generate trillions of dollars in new services."
• 7 Best Semi-Autonomous Systems Available Right Now - Autotrader.
• 32 HOURS IN CHANDLER, ARIZONA, THE SELF-DRIVING CAPITAL OF THE WORLD - Wired.
• Apple Car - "Everything We Know." MacRumors.
• Audi Grandsphere concept is the company's vision of a self-driving luxury future - "Audi has yet to release anything like a fully self-driving car, but the Grandsphere concept plays with the idea of how we interact with vehicles when the driver doesn't need to acually drive. Much like the recently unveiled Audi Skysphere concept, which imagined a sports car in which driving is optional, the Grandsphere concept imagines a luxury car where the driver can just ride."
• AUDI'S A8 SEDAN ROLLS WITH THE PUNCHES TO MAKE T-BONE CRASHES SAFER - Wired.
• Automated driving system - Wikipedia.
• Autonomous driving - "5 steps to the self-driving car." BMW.com.
• Autonomous vehicles & the future of urban tourism - ResearchGate.
• Autopilot - Tesla.
• Bad News: Self-Driving Cars May Be Roaming Empty Much Of The Time - "Empty vehicles are ridesharing cars that lack any passengers, a money losing moment, and the question is how self-driving cars will do in comparison."
• BMW & Mercedes call it quits on their self-driving car partnership - "The automakers say they may work together again in the future."
• BMW 5 Series Sedan - "For more than forty years, the BMW 5 Series stood for uncompromising performance and dynamic driving. Now it takes its place as one of the most interactive and innovative vehicles in the BMW lineup."
• Cars That Are Almost Self-Driving - U.S. News Best Cars.
• Cars without drivers still need a moral compass. But what kind? - "Humans will soon subcontract their ethical dilemmas to machines. We must be prepared to make some tough choices."
• China Is Testing More Driverless Cars Than Any Other Country - "Assisted driving systems and robot taxis are becoming more popular with government help, as cities designate large areas for testing on public roads."
• Elon Musk says Tesla's Full Self-Driving subscription arrives in early 2021 - "Tesla is narrowing the time frame for the Full Self-Driving subscription rollout. Elon Musk told Twitter followers that the pay-per-month package is now due to arrive 'early next year.' In theory, you could add the autonomous (currently semi-autonomous) features without a steep up-front cost in a matter of months."
• Global preferences for who to save in self-driving car crashes revealed - "Congratulations to: young people, large groups of people, and people who aren’t animals."
• Guide to Self-Driving Cars - Consumer Reports.
• Hands-free driving is becoming more popular - but is it safe? - "GM thinks it can teach its customers to use its hands-free Super Cruise system safely. But Tesla may be muddying the waters."
• Here’s what happens when cops pull over a driverless Cruise vehicle - "It’s been a little over two months since Cruise started letting the people of San Francisco catch rides on its driverless robotaxis, and one of its cars already had a run-in with police. In a video originally posted to Instagram last weekend, the user captures the awkward - and somewhat comical - interaction between the San Francisco Police Department and the autonomous vehicle after it’s pulled over for not having its lights on."
• HOW DO SELF-DRIVING CARS SEE? (AND HOW DO THEY SEE ME)? - Wired.
• How driverless cars will change our world - "Self-driving vehicles are steadily becoming a reality despite the many hurdles still to be overcome - and they could change our world in some unexpected ways."
• Human Perspective on moral decisions made by machine intelligence, such as self-driving cars - Moral Machine | Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• IT’S ELON MUSK VS. EVERYONE ELSE IN THE RACE FOR FULLY DRIVERLESS CARS - "The Tesla CEO is forging his own path toward full autonomy."
• Kiss Your Car Goodbye: The Rise of Mobility as a Service - Bloomberg.
• Mercedes becomes the first automaker to sell Level 3 self-driving vehicles in California - "The hands- and eyes-off system can be used on designated highways including the I15."
• Mercedes-Benz Introduces World’s First Internationally Valid System For Conditionally Automated Driving - "Mercedes-Benz is the first automotive company in the world to meet the demanding legal requirements for a level 3 system. Germany has taken a pioneering role in this with the opening of the Road Traffic Act of 2017 for level 3 systems. The result is that customers will be able to purchase an S-Class with Drive Pilot, which will enable them to drive in a conditionally automated mode of up to 37 mph or 60 kmh, in heavy traffic on suitable highways within Germany."
• Mercedes-Benz to launch Level 3 self-driving system in 2022 after gaining regulatory approval - "Mercedes-Benz has been granted regulatory approval in Germany for a new Drive Pilot Level 3 self-driving system, the automaker said on Thursday. The basis of the approval is the internationally valid UN Regulation 157 dealing with automated lane-keep systems, meaning Mercedes will be able to offer the system internationally, provided individual countries allow it. On the SAE scale of self-driving capability, Level 3 denotes systems that allow drivers to take their hands off the wheel and eyes off the road in certain situations, but are far short of true autonomous driving as the driver still needs to be ready to take back control at any time. Mercedes said Drive Pilot will work in dense traffic on pre-mapped stretches of highway, at speeds up to 37 mph, with the system handling steering, acceleration, and braking."
• Mercedes-Benz Vision One-Eleven: A Glimpse Of Mercedes’ Future - "The automotive industry has never been in a state of greater upheaval than it is today. Everything from drivetrain technology to connected technology to self-driving technology is shifting faster than ever before, and every global automaker is struggling to keep up. These fast-paced, tectonic shifts in automotive tech are driving future product, as reflected in Mercedes-Benz’ newest concept car, the Vision One-Eleven."
• Most self-driving companies say this tech is crucial. Elon Musk disagrees - CNN Business.
• NVIDIA & Mercedes-Benz Join Forces In An Autonomous Car Power Play - "The race for autonomous driving is on and today NVIDIA and Mercedes-Benz are announcing an agreement to advance the entire fleet of the German Automaker’s premium vehicles, with AI-enabled technology powered by NVIDIA’s autonomous vehicle compute platforms."
• Owning a Car Will Soon Be as Quaint as Owning a Horse - "The shift away from private vehicles will happen faster than we think."
• ROLLS-ROYCE 103EX CONTINUES TO SET THE AGENDA FOR THE FUTURE OF LUXURY MOBILITY TWO YEARS AFTER IT ARRIVES - Rolls-Royce Motor Cars PressClub.
• Self-driving car - Wikipedia.
• Self-driving car dilemmas reveal that moral choices are not universal - "Survey maps global variations in ethics for programming autonomous vehicles."
• Self-driving car manufacturers - Wikipedia.
• Self-Driving Cars Could Become Rolling Bordellos & Honeymoon Suites, Study Finds - "What will passengers do when they don't have to hold on to the wheel? A recent study seems to know..."
• Self-driving cars are now on the streets of Hamburg - "Five electric Volkswagen cars fitted with the latest in autonomous technology are now driving a section of Hamburg's streets."
• Sharing economy - Wikipedia.
• System Architecture Evolution (SAE) - the core network architecture of 3GPP's LTE wireless communication standard.
• Tesla Autopilot - Wikipedia.
• The leaders in self-driving cars - "While a number of companies are entering the autonomous vehicle space, these 10 are making the most progress in advancing the technology."
• THE STRANGE MATING RITUALS OF SELF-DRIVING CAR COMPANIES - Wired.
• This is not a self-driving car - "Your periodic reminder to stop conflating advanced driver assistance systems with autonomous vehicles."
• This self-driving hotel room could revolutionize travel - "A hotel room on wheels, the Autonomous Travel Suite (ATS) is the brainchild of Toronto-based Steve Lee of Aprilli Design Studio and could revolutionize the way we travel."
• Top 10 Best Self-Driving Cars Autonomous Vehicles - Gayot.
• Trolley problem - beginning in 2001, the trolley problem and its variants have been used extensively in empirical research on moral psychology. The problem often arises in the discussion of the ethics of the design of autonomous vehicles.
• Uber ditches effort to develop own self-driving car - "Ride-hailing company sells division to startup Aurora but says they will collaborate."
• Volkswagen partners with Microsoft on automated cars - "Microsoft will supply the cloud tech to speed up self-driving development."
• Volvo & Uber's first self-driving car is ready for the road - "The XC90 variant is designed to support fully autonomous ridesharing."
• Waymo - Wikipedia.
• Waymo & Cruise Vie For Supremacy In Murky California Self-Driving Data - Forbes.
• Waymo blames self-driving collision on pesky human - "It defended its technology in a post revealing an accident involving one of its self-driving cars."
• When Will We Have Fully Autonomous Cars? - PartCatalog.
• Who makes self-driving cars? - "The Top 22 Self-Driving Car Manufacturers."
• Who's Winning the Self-Driving Car Race? - "A scorecard breaking down everyone from Alphabet’s Waymo to Zoox."
• Why the 2019 Audi A8 won't get Level 3 partial automation in the US - "This four-door flagship won't be available with Audi's Traffic Jam Pilot semi-automated tech, but it'll still feature gobs of next-level safety gear."
• why the driverless car revolution has stalled - "As Uber parks its plans for robotaxis, experts admit the autonomous vehicle challenge is bigger than anticipated."
• YOUR CADILLAC CAN NOW DRIVE ITSELF MORE PLACES - Wired.

Top Self-Driving Cars & Autonomous Vehicles

• Acura RLX sedan - "The AcuraWatch suite of innovative safety and driver assistance technologies comes standard on the every RLX. With multiple radar and ultrasonic sensors, the RLX provides all the luxury and confidence you've come to expect from Acura."
• Audi A8 - "Redefining Luxury, Driver Assistance and Technology." Luxury found the vehicle it deserves.
• BMW 5 Series Sedan - "For more than forty years, the BMW 5 Series stood for uncompromising performance and dynamic driving. Now it takes its place as one of the most interactive and innovative vehicles in the BMW lineup. Gorgeous design and luxurious comfort make the 5 Series more than a statement piece - it’s a work of art."
• BMW 7 Series - Adaptive Drive: Advanced automotive technology allows the 7 Series to automatically adjust to driving preferences, road conditions, and even navigation – so it handles perfectly under any conditions.
• Cadillac CT6 - "The available Super Cruise technology is the first true hands-free driver-assistance feature for the freeway."
• Faraday Future FF91 - "Venture Forward." FF 91 is our first production vehicle and flagship model. All-electric, autonomous-ready and seamlessly connected, it embodies our latest mobility advancements in performance, intelligence, and user experience. This is the reason why we gave FF 91 a future-forward design that visually sets it apart from anything else on the road.
• Infiniti Q50 sedan - By giving a gentle steering assist, this available convenience feature helps you maintain your lane, even in windy highway conditions. Forward Emergency Braking: This system monitors your closing speed to the vehicle ahead of you, and if deceleration is required, it helps alert you and can apply the brakes to help minimize the severity of a collision—or even help prevent one.
• Lexus LS Sedan - "From pre-collision technology that can help steer away if it detects an impending collision to pedestrian detection, this available system offers our most advanced safety technology yet."
• Mercedes-Benz E-Class Sedan - "This isn't just the most advanced E-Class yet. With technologies never before offered on a production car, the E-Class writes another chapter in the story of driving: Where cars can talk to each other, and look out for you, in ways you never imagined."
• Mercedes-Benz S-Class Sedan - "The one car every car aspires to be." Today's S-Class previews the future of driving. It can change lanes with a tap of your finger. Slow itself for a tollboth or exit. Turn a traffic jam into easy street. And watch out for danger ahead, even when it's coming from behind.
• Rolls-Royce 103EX - "It's no secret that the future belongs to self-aware, autonomous vehicles. But for the first time, Rolls-Royce will give artificial intelligence a name, a soul and a purpose. Her name is Eleanor. For over a century, the Spirit of Ecstasy has silently graced every Rolls-Royce."
• Tesla Models S & X - "The safest, quickest car on the road—with industry-leading performance, range, and storage." Autopilot advanced safety and convenience features are designed to assist you with the most burdensome parts of driving. Model S comes standard with advanced hardware capable of providing Enhanced Autopilot features today, and full self-driving capabilities in the future.
• Volvo XC60 - "Winner for the prestigious 2018 North American Utility Vehicle of the Year award."
• Waymo - "We're building the world's most experienced driver." Waymo began as the Google self-driving car project in 2009. Today, we're an independent self-driving technology company with a mission to make it safe and easy for everyone to get around - without the need for anyone in the driver’s seat.