Preparing Autonomous Vehicles for the Mainstream Market
ECE/Khoury Assistant Professor Michael Everett explains why current autonomous vehicle technology isn’t ready for the mainstream market. The autonomy kits used on these vehicles aren’t precise enough to meet safety standards, he says.
This article originally appeared on Northeastern Global News. It was published by Cesareo Contreras. Main photo: A Waymo driverless car is seen navigating the road in Tempe, Arizona. Photo By: Alexandra Buxbaum/Sipa USA via AP Images
Will robotaxis ever go mainstream? Self-driving companies have made advancements, but technology is still lacking, expert says
For many, it’s an alluring proposition — imagine a world where humans no longer need to own a car and instead commute via robotaxi.
Autonomous vehicle evangelists say the potential benefits are vast. With fewer human drivers on the road, there could be a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, a decrease in vehicular accidents, and less traffic congestion.
Self-driving companies such as Waymo, Cruise and Amazon’s Zoox have been developing that technology for more than a decade, deploying and testing their robotaxi services in select U.S. cities, including Phoenix and San Francisco.
Advancements have been made over the past 10 years and these companies continue to expand their operations in more cities. Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, last month began offering its robotaxi service in parts of Los Angeles with no safety driver behind the wheel, for example.
But for as good as the technology has become, rollouts have not been without controversy. A select number of cars have been documented “glitching out” — stopping in the middle of roads, making illegal turns and causing accidents. Self-driving vehicles also continue to struggle to operate through snow, rain and other challenging weather environments that cloud their sensors.
It looks like Tesla, which is developing its own self-driving technology, will soon throw its hat in the ring and reportedly reveal its own robotaxi on Aug. 8.
When can we expect these robotaxi services to hit mass adoption?
Michael Everett, a Northeastern University assistant professor with joint appointments in the College of Engineering and Khoury College of Computer Sciences, says there is still a long way to go before the technology is good enough to hit the mainstream market.
“The technology doesn’t seem there yet to me,” says Everett, who leads Northeastern University’s Autonomy and Intelligence Laboratory. “The reality is that these autonomous vehicles are still pretty specialized pieces of equipment.”
Michael Everett, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, heads Northeastern’s Autonomy and Intelligence Laboratory. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University
Autonomy kits outfitted on these self-driving vehicles are made up of lidar sensors, a GPS navigation system and a host of cameras, Everett says. When driving on the road, these autonomous vehicles have to make numerous decisions a second to understand their environment.
And they are far from perfect, he notes.
“There’s a few pieces that happen in this autonomous decision-making process that the car has to make,” he says. “One is figuring out all these different things in the world, and even that isn’t super obvious.”
By taking advantage of lidar sensors, which work by emitting pulsed waves of lights to help determine objects in an environment, self-driving vehicles are able to develop a proximate map of their surroundings, Everett says.
The challenge comes when these self-driving vehicles’ onboard artificial intelligence has to determine what’s safe to drive on and what’s not, he says.
Read full story at Northeastern Global News