Autonomous vehicles do not require real-time instruction from humans to function and rely on sensors and on-board computers to make decisions. They are used in various industries, including oil and gas, military, and scientific research. Semi-autonomous Mars rovers can make independent navigation decisions, and DARPA sponsored competitions to develop driverless cars.
An autonomous vehicle is any type of vehicle that does not require real-time instruction from a human operator to function. Making a vehicle autonomous means giving it a significant level of internal decision-making ability. Autonomous cars and submarines have been developed for a variety of purposes.
For an autonomous vehicle to make useful decisions in real time, sensors are required to obtain feedback information from the environment. Some form of on-board computer, often a small microprocessor, can take this data and determine the status of the vehicle. This can be as simple as tracking the vehicle’s current location, but can also involve other types of data measurement. The on-board computer implements pre-programmed responses based on its current state so that the autonomous vehicle behaves intelligently.
Research into submarines with autonomous capability began about 50 years ago. These autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are used by the oil and gas industries to map the seafloor before underwater infrastructure such as oil and gas fields is built. In the military, AUVs are used to help detect other submarines and monitor protected areas for new objects, such as mines. Scientists studying lakes and oceans may find an autonomous vehicle useful for collecting compositional and visual data.
Mars Exploration Rovers can be described as semi-autonomous in that they can make a number of independent navigation decisions. This capability was designed due to the delay in round-trip communication times between Earth and Mars. These delays can vary from approximately 6 minutes to a full 40 minutes depending on the position of the planets. To help the rovers make further progress on any given day, engineers programmed them to receive general instructions from human operators. Rovers can also make some specific decisions on their own. Different levels of “courage” and “cowardice” can be programmed into the rovers depending on how dangerous the local terrain is.
Recently, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) sponsored a series of competitions to develop a driverless car. The DARPA Grand Challenge featured teams competing against each other to get their car through an off-road course in the fastest time. In 2007, DARPA sponsored an urban challenge, which included a course in an urban environment. It is commonly believed that the DARPA challenges were intended to stimulate the development of an autonomous vehicle capable of operating in hostile urban warfare zones. The application of a driverless car, however, has also been suggested for civilian use.
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