Dreaming of Driverless: Levels of Vehicle Autononomy

Examination of driverless vehicle Specs.

Dreaming of Driverless: What’s the Difference Between Level 2 and Level 5 Autonomy?

January 25, 2018 by Jeff Davis in NVidia

Cars with some autonomous capabilities are already here: here’s now to understand what’s coming next.

Self-driving cars are no longer science fiction. Today, you can already buy a car that steers itself through rush-hour traffic on the freeway and parallel parks. However, for a car that can do the same job as a chauffeur, you’ll have to wait a few years.

The “driverless” revolution is rolling out in stages, much like the first cars developed from slow, steam-powered contraptions to gasoline-powered automobiles to now fully electric vehicles. The key to making the leap forward from the prototypes packed with racks of servers already roaming California’s freeways to vehicles you can drive off the lot: putting more computing power into less space.

That’s coming, thanks to breakthroughs such as NVIDIA’s Xavier System-on-a-Chip. Detailed at this month’s Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas, Xavier is the most complex system on a chip, or SoC, ever created, with more than 9 billion transistors and representing an investment of $2 billion in research and development.

So what kind of capabilities can this kind of computing horsepower unleash? To define the path to fully realized autonomy, the Society of Automotive Engineers (better known as SAE International) detailed six categories of autonomous capability to establish clear benchmarks in a field of technology that has so many different elements in play. (These guidelines supersede NHTSA’s earlier standards.)

Here’s a Cliffs Notes version of what those are, and when we’re likely to see them on the streets:

Level 0 – Your grandparents’ 1970s station wagon

Consumer vehicle introduction: 1900-present

At its minimum, level 0 is essentially a seat and steering wheel, with zero automation. (Sorry, automatic transmissions don’t count.) That covers a broad range, from Clark Griswold’s vinyl-sided station wagon in National Lampoon’s Vacation to much more modern vehicles.

Contemporary cars with driver assistance systems that issue visual and audible alerts such as Volvo’s Lane Departure Warning or Nissan’s Moving Object Detection fit here, too. But beeps and flashes are the limit — the car remains totally dependent on human drivers for steering and speed.  ...   (more at the link)   ,,,   (More below follows at link above)  ....