Driverless, Non-autonomous Traffic Management System Reflective Research Report

Executive Summary

Autonomous system to be implemented is a thrill and has been an idea present for decades now. The existing infrastructure and legislation will not allow this system to be implemented yet. This will require a gradual progress from partial automation to full automation- this is a complete 5 stage process. This system also require special trained employees in the center with an autonomous database along with compactible policies. This system requires a detailed data of road networks, High-Definition road map to locate any obstacle, fare calculation for passenger (depending on travel time and miles) and along with number of passengers in a vehicle. Floating car data will be required to control the vehicles features such as acceleration and this all data need to be stored and analyze in real time. This system will have social, environmental, and economical impact in both positive and negative ways. This may increase travelling hence more productivity and economical activities but also a wastage in amount of energy by an urge of travelling. The cost studies concluded that it may be the same cost for private car owners but decrease the fare of mass transport drastically.

The conclusion of this report suggest that this system is not yet operable unless some more research and solid solutions are figured out as this is a huge investment and the current technology present does not look promising quite yet.

Current Situation: Autonomous Traffic System

Autonomous, driverless, or robotic vehicles has been envisioned by futuristic for about more than a decade now and is still under the most researched and controversial for its purpose. The research first started off at 1980 where the autonomous was only possible for the need of special roads such as highways. Onwards, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) held challenges to showcase autonomous technology at various places. More recently from 2012 to today, private companies such as Google, Toyota, Nissan etc. have tested autonomous vehicle and made it available for sale (Anderson, et al., 2016). Tesla has been working on this technology for several years and launched an auto-pilot car on October 2015. Big companies such as BMW, Mercedes and Apple have now started experimenting with this technology. A four billion dollars fund was proposed by Obama for development of these vehicles  (Brodsky , 2016).

The vehicles have been made and tested yet still saying that these autonomous vehicles will now build up to make a system is too early.  It is still a mystery that how these autonomous vehicles will fit into this existing framework and legislation and currently how these vehicles will adapt on public road  (Brodsky , 2016). The House of Representatives approved H.R. on 6 September 2017, SELF DRIVE Act, which precluded States from controlling autonomous vehicle construction and extended the authority of NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safty Administration) to issue exemptions from the traditional requirements. The law mandated each autonomous vehicle manufacturer to request certification for the safety evaluation demonstrating how safety is handled, and to create and publicize their information protection and data privacy policies for customers  (Lau & Haugh, 2018).

Autonomous Traffic System Operation

Autonomous Traffic system to be fully operation requires five stage of testing for system to be fully automated and controlled. These stages are:

– Stage 0: Manual cars in which driver needs to do all the tasks.

– Stage 1: Driver controls the driving with some assistance features is introduced example automatic cars.

– Stage 2: Partial automation with automated function of steering and acceleration yet still driver needs to do task and monitor environment.

– Stage 3: Conditional Automation in which driver does not need to monitor the environment but must be ready to take control when needed.

– Stage 4: Vehicle is performing all the driving tasks, but driver must have option to take control (Shuttleworth, 2017).

Autonomous system on the other hand require some more operations, only being autonomous is not sufficient. System must have consistency and also effective control when little or no human intervention present. This require a special training employee that he/she should know effectively that how this system works and if something fails the control can be taken over to avoid disasters  (Scharre, 2016). This is such a complex job that one should be trained before to be hire.

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