Researchers have researched that there will be approximately eight million autonomous or semi-autonomous automobiles prancing on the road by the year 2025. Before this, self-driving vehicles will have to first develop themselves through six levels of driving assistance technology advancements.
What exactly are these levels? And till where have we developed?
The six levels of driving Automation ranging from 0 to 5, which is from manual to fully automatic, are defied by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). The U.S. Department of Transportation has adopted these levels.
Level 0 (No Automation/Manual)
Nowadays, cars mostly accompany manual transmission with level 0 (No Driving Automation). The human delivers the ‘dynamic driving task’ though there may be the technologies in charge to help the driver.
An example is the emergency braking technology – the reason it isn’t qualified as Automation is that it doesn’t drive the vehicle.
Level 1 (Driver Assistance)
Level 1 ADAS is the most basic level of Automation. This level delivers a single automated feature such as accelerating or steering in cruise control. Adaptive Cruise Control is a technology of Automation where the vehicle can be kept safely behind the front moving car. This Automation is qualified to be level 1 as the human needs to monitor the same aspects such as braking and steering controls according to the surroundings.
Level 2 (Partial Driving Automation)
Level 2 is called advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). The automobile handles and controls accelerating, decelerating, and steering in this Automation. The Automation developed here misses a bit to qualify a level of self Driving. The reason is that a human sits in the driver seat and can take control of the vehicle anytime.
Level 3 (Conditional Driving Automation)
Vehicles with level 3 Automation have a feature called environmental detection by which it can make decisions by informing themselves, such as accelerating over a slow driving car, but the driver needs to supervise it, keeping in mind that if the machine fails to execute the task, the driver handles the situation properly.
Level 4 (High Driving Automation)
The difference between level 3 and level 4 is that if there is a system failure, the level 4 Automation vehicle can intervene in the process. Vehicles with level 4 automation do not require human interference in most cases, but in contrast, a human can still have an option to manually override the vehicle. The level 4 automation can operate self Driving mode. But this can be done only In restricted areas such as urban surroundings with speed limits of 30 mph. This is termed as geofencing.
Level 5 (Full Driving Automation)
Level 5 does not crave human attention. The level 5 cars are expected not to have accelerating and braking pedals and not even Steering. They will be non-geofencing, making it possible to go anywhere and everywhere and do everything an experienced individual can. Automobiles with level 5 automation are under testing in many pockets of the world but are not available for buying purposes.
Conclusion
While the future autonomous automobiles are under testing, much more is expected from them. Mainstream production has begun in the United States, but the upbringing is still a few years away.
