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person has to sense the environment
and detect things. The challenge, he
said, is to ensure that the machines
are delivering better decisions from
all the available information than a
human can.
Certain convolutional neural network
algorithms, which are used in
pattern and image recognition,
have demonstrated a detection rate
accuracy higher than that of humans.
And, as Patwardhan pointed out,
our senses don’t provide the precise
estimates of distance and speed that
radar sensors can offer. What might
happen in the face of something
unexpected remains unknown.
“We know humans, based on their
experiences, can handle certain
situations. It remains to be seen
how automobiles can handle these
situations,” he said.
We may see self-driving cars rolled
out via a zoned approach where
they’re allowed only in areas that are
well mapped out to support them,
said Patwardhan. Once these vehicles
are out of the designated zones, he
said, they may be required to turn off
certain features and operate more like
regular cars.
There’s also discussion in the industry
about who owns the cloud-based
elements of this system. Notes
Thomas, “A car is a moving IoT
application and if you have a lot of
these cars with multiple types of
sensors, the information from each
car could be aggregated and shared
to help all drivers and other end users.
This would place different constraints
on the full system and also raise
questions around who owns, controls,
and can benefit from the information.
Who will differentiate their products
with the aggregated information
from the cars moving around and
sensing and monitoring their close
environment? The car manufacturers,
the system company offering the
sensors…?”
Indeed, we could even see a mix of
the cloud vs. in-vehicle approaches
that Patwardhan mentioned. One
viable approach, he noted, would
be
a
vehicle-to-infrastructure
communication model providing
broad access to the information
needed. These are among some of the
questions that will need to be ironed
out as theautomotive ecosystem
evolves.
So, Self-driving Car or
Human Driver?
So, getting back to that question of
who makes better decisions: self-
driving cars or humans? As Thomas
notes, with the integration of ICs
into cars, manufacturers are putting
in more processing capability than a