Everything about self driving cars

Imagine going to work and doing your daily chores without the hassle of driving through endless traffic which drives you insane. Well, the idea about self-driving vehicles isn't new but it's much more affordable for consumers than it was ever before. With every passing day, all the major car manufacturers are offering their super sleek self-driving cars dripping with the latest technology.

Let us understand the technology behind the self-driving cars.

What goes behind the scene?

The working criteria of autonomous/self-driving vehicles is same whether you take the offerings from Tesla, Google, Uber or other competitors. The major difference comes to the design of the car which depends on the likes of the consumer.

Most self-driving cars create a map of their surrounding by using high precision laser beams. Take for instance, Uber's self-driving cars use 64 laser beams to create a map of the surrounding environment and then feed the information into the controlling unit that create the commands for the basic functions of the car such as acceleration, braking, lights etc.

But still to this date human intervention is required to kick start the self-driving option of the car. There is bit difference in how the manufacturers decide to handle the critical situations where life and death situation is involved. Some manufacturers transfer control to the human driver, whereas, some manufacturers have hard coded rules into their systems to handle such critical situations.

The idea of self-driving cars is very exciting and futuristic but it has some aspects which are a cause of concern for the people. Most important factor when considering self-driving cars is safety. Self-driving cars will no doubt reduce the number of accidents but the idea of hacking a car controlled solely by a computer is spine chilling. Next in list is the impact on environment. Environmental activists are concerned about the fact that self-driving cars won't be much friendly to the environment because many people who don't drive will start using this technology and millions of vehicles will be added to the grid which will consume more gasoline, hence, increasing the carbon footprint.

All in all the advancement in the field of self-driving cars is one the biggest achievements in the field of technology but as all the things have good and bad aspects, this technology isn't much different.