About Autonomous Cars

The Difference Between Human Driving and Autonomous Driving

To begin with, what is the difference between humans driving and autonomous driving?
Let's compare them from three points, recognition of the situation, judgment and control.

  Human Driving Autonomous Driving
Recognition of The Situation Eyes and Ears Sensors
Judgement Brain Computer
Control Limbs Machine

As you can see, human driving mainly relies on a human's senses, but autonomous driving relies mainly on a machine. Therefore, autonomous driving can be considered to be more accurate and safe than human driving, except for when there are mechanical problems.

The Definition of the Autonomous Car

The autonomous car has not been defined globally yet. We will introduce the classification by NHTSA.

The Classification by NHTSA
Level 0   Driver always controls driving.
Level 1 Specific Function Automation The car can do steering, braking and acceleration but does not support all of the steering, braking and acceleration (AEB)
Level 2 Combined Function Automation The driver is responsible for safe operation, but all driving support, steering, braking and acceleration are done by the car. (ADAS)
Level 3 Limited Self-Driving Automation Only when the car's functions reach the limit, the driver himself carries out the driving operation.
Level 4 Full Self-Driving Automation The driver entrusts all the driving operations and surrounding monitoring to the system.

Driver support technology applies to Level 2 and now the Government is aiming to realize Level 3.

In addition, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism considers Level 1 as "Safe driving support system," Level 2 and Level 3 as "Semi-automatic driving system," Level4 as "Fully automatic driving system," and Level 2~4 as "Automatic driving system."

The Types of Autonomous Driving

Autonomous driving is classified as "Autonomic Type" and "Cooperative Type."

Autonomic Type
The car uses an in-vehicle system such as a camera or radar to drive, which recognizes its surroundings. It has the merit of functioning independently. The current driving support technology which will be described later is mainly this type.
Autonomic Type
Cooperative Type
The car acquires information provided from the outside, using communication and drives. The technology called "V2X" includes three types of Vehicle-to-Pedestrian communication (V2P), Vehicle-to-Vehicle communication (V2V), Vehicle-to-Infrastructure communication (V2I) which are indispensable for the cooperative type. Since we can obtain technology related to a wider range of road traffic information than the autonomic type, more advanced autonomous driving such as "prediction" is possible. However, when carrying out Vehicle-to-Vehicle communication, it is necessary for both vehicles to be equipped with the same system, so we need to make the system more widespread and make the standard for autonomous driving technology.
Cooperative Type
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