The Age of Autonomous Cars

Stanford University has set a new milestone in the driverless car effort by racing their programmed car around a race track faster than a race car driver. Engineers raced their car against David Vodden, an amateur class champion, at Thunderhill Raceway Park. After studying the layout of the track and the brain activity of race drivers, they developed a working program which allowed the car to race the track at speeds of over 120 miles per hour. The mathematics behind getting a racecar to maintain traction on the track at high speeds are exactly the same as when a normal driver faces non-standard driving conditions on the highway. The data garnered would directly benefit safety programs that would be required on commercial autonomous cars. The Stanford team studied race drivers in adverse situations to learn how to react to similar situations when the computer is driving. They learned that drivers actually rely on instinct rather than judgment when their cars lost traction and slipped around. By programming their computer to rely on a set response when detecting slippage instead of a stabilization algorithm, the engineers saw a positive effect in the computer navigating the track. Just like a driver, the computer has to quickly decide how to handle a difficult maneuver.

Through all this data acquisition and analysis, the Stanford team got their car to lap the track 0.4 seconds faster than and amateur race driver. This is just another stepping stone in developing the technology behind autonomous cars for commercial use. Things like safety and reliability have to be nearly guaranteed as error-proof before consumers will buy into it. By learning how to get a race car to lap a race track with faster times, the research can easily be translated for the consumer world. Wait another 15 years and I am confident the technology will have matured enough to see the first driverless car in the market.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11410261/Driverless-car-beats-racing-driver-for-first-time.html