Communications of the ACM
For Driverless Cars, City-Like Test Sites Offer the npredictable
Automakers are turning to simulated cities to help perfect self-driving vehicles.
Credit: Laura McDermott/The New York Times
Automakers are turning to city-like test sites as they race to create the perfect self-driving car.
For example, Mcity in Ann Arbor, MI, offers a 32-acre site to recreate Anywhere, USA, complete with simulated city streets, intersections, traffic lights, storefronts, road signs, parking meters, a tunnel, and eventually a railroad crossing. Ford, General Motors, Honda, Toyota, and Nissan are using Mcity as a place for trial and error, outside of the public eye. Mcity and similar sites provide a way to validate the reliability and safety of autonomous cars.
"We have to see how these vehicles interact with their surroundings and need repeatable, reliable tests to do that," says Huei Peng, a professor and director of the University of Michigan Mobility Transformation Center.
Autonomous vehicles might have to be driven hundreds of millions, or even billions, of miles to reach a statistical certainty of their safety, according to a recent study from the RAND Corporation.
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently allowed several companies to begin test-driving their autonomous vehicles on public roads. "There are real and significant questions about the safety of new technologies," says NHTSA's Mark Rosekind. "The old model of counting vehicle miles and counting crashes and injuries is not sufficient."
From The New York Times
View Full Article - May Require Free Registration
Abstracts Copyright © 2016 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA
No entries found