Journal #6 Huizhong Pan

In Urmson’s article “Progress in Self-Driving Vehicles”, he states why self-driving vehicles are important in the future and introduces some ways used to development unmanned technology including the application of machine learning, large-scale mapping, improved LIDAR(light detection and ranging remote sensing technology) and radar sensing capability.

Firstly, in the part of DARPA’s Grand Challenges, a way fusing the information from other publicly available sources with onboard sensing data was used in a game. What’s more, Stanford team combined machine learning with LIDAR, which was proved to make vehicles drive faster. Secondly, in the part of The Urban Challenge, key technical advances were high-density LIDAR and using high-density maps. In the last part of Post-Challenge Progress, the technology being developed by Google use high-resolution maps and combine LIDAR, camera and radar sensors to provide a better model of the environment. Thus, on the base of these technologies, driver assistance systems even fully self-driving vehicles will reach an advanced stage in the near future.

In terms of the negatives and challenges of unmanned technology, there are indeed some. First of all, the author states that 90 percent of traffic accidents are due to human error, and how can we guarantee technologies which are created by human will not make mistakes? Just image that an unmanned car drives at rush hour, and once it is out of control, how horrible the consequences will be! When come with the challenges, it should be that the unmanned vehicles must obey traffic rules strictly that we have made. The author also mentions, “not only to complete the challenge with moving vehicles but also to obey a subset of driving rules”.

Even though there are advanced technologies we have talked about, I still dare not to drive automated vehicles. I can’t stand that when I get close to other cars, and I can’t do anything but listen to my car. Maybe my body keeps safe, but I will be insane. There is one situation that I will use unmanned vehicle when it is used as a truck, and I needn’t to be in the vehicle, so I will not suffer the mental hurt.