Still Waiting for Fully Self-Driving Cars

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Still Waiting for Self-Driving Cars

By Keith Kirkpatrick

Communications of the ACM, April 2022, Vol. 65 No. 4, Pages 12-14  10.1145/3516517

Over the past decade, technology and automotive pundits have predicted the "imminent" arrival of fully autonomous vehicles that can drive on public roads without any active monitoring or input from a human driver. Elon Musk has predicted his company Tesla would deliver fully autonomous vehicles by the end of 2021, but he made similar predictions in 2020, 2019, and 2017. Each prediction has fallen flat, largely due to real-world safety concerns, particularly related to how self-driving cars perform in adverse conditions or situations.

The State of Self-Driving Cars Today

Despite such proclamations from Tesla, which released its optimistically named Full Self Driving capability for AutoPilot in October 2021, fully automated self-driving cars have not yet arrived. Instead, most manufacturers are offering systems that feature capabilities that generally fall within the first three of the six levels of autonomy defined by the Society of Automotive Engineering (SAE), which range from Level 0 (no driving automation) to Level 5 (full self-driving capabilities under all conditions).

Most new cars today feature some Level 1 driver assistance technology, including automatic braking, lane-keeping assist, and adaptive cruise control. More advanced systems like Tesla's Autopilot or General Motors' Super Cruise, fall into the Level 2 classification indicating the car can autonomously manage its speed and steering, but requires the driver to remain focused and able to take control in the event of an adverse event. Other manufacturers, such as Honda and Audi, are focusing on Level 3 autonomous systems that allow the car to take complete control, but only under very specific conditions, such as low-speed driving in traffic, in good weather, and only on preapproved roads.

"I'm sure a lot of manufacturers would like to spring over Level 2 and Level 3, to the greatest extent possible," says Peter Hancock, a Pegasus Professor and Provost Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Institute for Simulation and Training at the University of Central Florida.

However, the most likely scenario under which Level 4-capable vehicles will arrive may be through the deployment of autonomous long-haul trucks. Hancock says that due to global truck driver shortages, there likely will be a stronger push to develop autonomous trucks, at least across interstate highways in the U.S., which are constructed to a specific design standard, are usually in good physical condition, and feature physical barriers between oncoming traffic.

Indeed, Aurora Innovation announced it is building a Level 4 autonomous system and plans to launch its autonomous trucking business in 2023, followed by our autonomous ride-hailing business in 2024. The company told Communications it has partnered with FedEx, Uber, Toyota, and truck OEMs (Volvo and PACCAR) to develop a partnership ecosystem focused on bringing self-driving technology to market. ... '