Expert Opinions: What will help regulators, public accept autonomous vehicles on the road?

May 11, 2016  - By

Q: What advance — or, overcoming what challenge — will most enable acceptance of autonomous vehicles on the road with regulators and the public?

Ganesh Pattabiraman Co-founder, CEO Nextnav

Ganesh
Pattabiraman
Co-founder, CEO
Nextnav

A: Similar to airplanes with an autopilot feature, the key issues that must be addressed in autonomous vehicles are redundancy and reliability of systems and appropriate, timely signals to the operator. One key area where this is required is the location of the vehicle. Autonomous location systems have to take into account areas where GPS works fine — but may suffer from an outage — and where GPS does not work, such as in urban canyons.


Jane Macfarlane Chief Scientist, Head of Research HERE

Jane
Macfarlane
Chief Scientist,
Head of Research
HERE

A: Autonomous vehicles face two key challenges. The first is enabling the vehicle to see beyond its sensors. Autonomous vehicles are composed of two functions: sensing the local environment and controlling the vehicle to operate in the sensed environment. This model must be extended to include the larger environment using cloud-delivered map information informed by a connected vehicle fleet. The second is building intelligence that allows autonomous vehicles to share the road safely with human drivers.


Kevin Dennehy Contributing Editor, GPS World; Director, Driverless Conference

Kevin
Dennehy
Contributing Editor, GPS World; Director,
Driverless Conference

A: The development of autonomous vehicle sensors, artificial intelligence and software is advancing rapidly. Technology is being tested in open-road environments — and in bad weather. Component costs are falling as technology companies and automakers eye specific rollout dates. What could slow this developing industry is bad press, and the resulting government regulation, from a high-profile cyber security breach or an incident like a partially autonomous car getting into a fatal crash.