Autonomous driving tests have already started on the road: Cesvimap has brought a level 4 autonomous car developed by the UPM and UC3M to Ávila
There is a crossroads in the auto industry. On the one hand, car enthusiasts want models with higher performance, a stiffer chassis and direct steering that maximize the driving pleasure. On the other hand, pragmatists say that driving is a tedious procedure, where you have to avoid traffic jams and find parking spaces.
It is this latter group that dreams of freeing up the hours behind the wheel through robotic driving and being able to spend them on productivity, sleep or, according to a study by the English publication ‘Annals of Tourism Research’, sex. “It is likely that in the future the autonomous car will be associated with prostitution, legal or illegal,” they say. But for these situations to exist, two preconditions are needed to realize self-driving cars on our roads: legislation that allows it and vehicles with satisfactory responsiveness in everyday traffic. For the R&D director of Cesvimap,
Rodrigo Encinar Martin“There is still time to see autonomous cars widespread, at least until 2050.”
He is the autonomous car project that his organization, the Mapfre Accident and Road Safety Experimentation Center, presented last Tuesday in Ávila. To replace the driver, any car must be able to accurately detect its surroundings and make decisions in a matter of hundredths of a second, without compromising the safety of its occupants or those around them. For this, the three essential elements are the sensors, a powerful microprocessor and the computer commands that determine what to do in each situation.
This latest batch was developed by the team from Carlos III University (UC3M), which together with another from the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) was responsible for unifying the physical sensors. Of the latter, lidar is the most important — and one of the most limiting factors for the development of the autonomous car —: a kind of advanced radar that works with lasers instead of electromagnetic waves. The two main problems associated with the use of lidar are that they are fragile systems when faced with impact and have an unaffordable cost for mass production, about 4,000 euros per unit.
However, the robot models will gradually appear: Mapfre has already arranged for several autonomous buses that run – always on the same route – through the Timanfaya National Park (Canary Islands). According to
Jose Maria Kreftthe CEO of Cesvimap, small autonomous vehicles will soon arrive to carry out home deliveries.
The self-driving powerhouses are Waymo — which boasts the computer artillery of its parent company, Google — and the Volkswagen Group, which aims to have an operational service in Hamburg by the middle of the decade. Both operations have in common that they have a commercial target once their product is ready, and that they have a multi-million dollar budget. This is not the case for the Cesvimap car.
Designed as “a platform to test the latest developments in sensors and computers”, the Cesvimap vehicle is relatively more rustic than that of Google and Volkswagen, but it reaches level 4 autonomy, just like them, in a closed and controlled environment. . Where driverless cars work best are in closed environments, because they are easier to map and because they don’t have the hard-to-calculate variable of other vehicles. For this reason, the chosen route in Ávila was about 300 meters long, with a roundabout at each end.
Cesvimap’s vehicle used its front camera to detect the straight line of the street and its position in it, while when it looked at the roundabout shape of the roundabout, it had to give way to GPS positioning – with an accuracy of two centimeters instead of two meters like the one available on phones – to calculate your position and trajectory. The UPM and UC3M programmers had to manually enter the position of a crosswalk along the route — their sensors can’t detect traffic lights — and the lidars are responsible for identifying if there is a pedestrian waiting at the crosswalk.
Calibrating the lidar’s sensitivity is tricky, as being too strict can cause the car to brake on a small object, such as a pigeon; while too lax would cause it to miss pedestrians. As for driving, this, without being as fluid as a human’s, does make it possible to pay attention to things other than the road, the ultimate goal of autonomous driving.
Now all that remains is to implement these vehicles in a situation of real coexistence with others, even with people behind the wheel, but the technology is still in its infancy and the legislation will not allow this for at least another two decades.
Source: La Verdad
I am Ida Scott, a journalist and content author with a passion for uncovering the truth. I have been writing professionally for Today Times Live since 2020 and specialize in political news. My career began when I was just 17; I had already developed a knack for research and an eye for detail which made me stand out from my peers.
