English for Academic Purposes – Daw, D.

IAE for IT – Module 1 – Descriptive Essays

Name: ............................................................................................................... Section

Automated Vehicles: The Past, Present and Future of the Driverless Car

Module 1: Source Texts for Descriptive Writing

Outline Prompt:The theory of earlier academics that a car could drive itself has become a reality today. Describe the development of the driverless car, its present day uses, and the future difficulties science has not yet solved.

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(Driverless Cars, n.d.)

(Colyer, n.d.)

English for Academic Purposes – Daw, D.

IAE for IT – Module 1 – Descriptive Essays

Name: ............................................................................................................... Section

Text 1: The Driverless Dream

Not long after the first cars were produced in factories, some engineers and scientists were looking to the next challenge: the driverless car. As early as 1925, the inventor Francis Houdina drove a radio-controlled car through New York City without anyone at the steering wheel. Over the next few decades, small improvements were made to this general design. However, it was not until the 1960s that John McCarthy, one of the founding fathers of AI (Artificial Intelligence), wrote an essay titled “Computer-Controlled Cars” where he described a keyboard used by passengers to type commands telling the car where to go, to change speed, and to change direction.

However, this was still just an idea; it took over 20 more years for researcher Dean Pomerleau to realize that this dream could become a reality through the use of neural networks. These networks would create real time images of the road and then direct the steering of a car. This breakthrough meant that by 1995, Pomerleau and Todd Jochem were able to put the Naviab driverless car on the road for the first time. This car managed a driverless trip of almost 4,500 kilometers from Pennsylvania to California and became known as the “No Hands Across America” journey.

By the early 21st century, traditional car manufacturers found they had more competition as IT companies started to develop their own automated vehicles. For example, while companies such as Toyota and BMW announced in 2003 that their new cars could automatically park themselves by 2009, Google had begun to develop the Waymo self-driving car. By 2014, Google’s cars had driven nearly 500,000 kilometers without any accidents, rising to over 3 million kilometers by 2018.

Traditional car makers have worked to remain competitive by continuing to develop driverless vehicles. For example, Mercedes has semi-autonomous features in some of their cars, while Nissan promises to deliver driverless cars by 2020. Audi claims that it will develop its the world’s first car that can detect the environment around it, and Volkswagon plans to work with Nvidia (visual AI specialists) to create the next generation of driverless cars. Source: Edelstein, S. (2018). A Ride through the History of Self Driving Cars. Retrieved from www.digitaltrends.com/cars/history-of-self-driving-cars-milestones/

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1925 American Wonder, invented by Francis Houdina (Wikimedia Commons, n.d.)

English for Academic Purposes – Daw, D.

IAE for IT – Module 1 – Descriptive Essays

Name: ............................................................................................................... Section

Text 2: Where are all the Self-Driving Cars?

Cars are becoming more sophisticated, and the move towards more self-sufficient vehicles now comes with highly advanced driver-assistance features like Cadillac’s Super Cruise and Tesla’s Autopilot. These allow drivers to take their hands off the steering wheel and feet off the pedals. Semi-autonomous systems are currently limited to specific tasks such as transporting people or goods in just a few cities. Typical examples include services like Uber and Lyft, food delivery services, and driverless shuttle services. Partially, this is because current technology is not sophisticated enough to allow them to travel unrestricted. Autonomous cars need immense amounts of data input before they can be confidently released upon public streets, and that will take time to collect. Consequently, the opportunity to buy a self-driving car, or even ride in one, is a lot further away than many might imagine. Moreover, most people are still happy to buy traditional driven cars, especially while the price of petrol is low.

Furthermore, the sensors that allow these cars to “see” their environment, combined with the computer hardware that is needed, are extremely expensive. Therefore, today most automakers assume that driverless cars will not be sold as personal vehicles, but instead will be used as part of service fleets by taxi and delivery companies. It is likely that by 2020 some of the first autonomous cars without traditional controls like steering wheels and foot pedals will start to appear. However, they may be constrained to urban centres, college campuses, or retirement communities for at least the next five to ten years.

Source: Hawkins, A. J. (2018). Retrieved from www.theverge.com/2018/1/30/16950726/state-of-autonomous-car-self-driving-ces-detroit-2018

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Tesla’s Autopilot (Maverique, 2018)

English for Academic Purposes – Daw, D.

IAE for IT – Module 1 – Descriptive Essays

Name: ............................................................................................................... Section

Text 3: Roadblocks towards Self-Driving Cars

Today, there is a clear distinction between what automated vehicles can do and what they will be required to do in the future.

The initial challenge is known as the handoff challenge. This is the gradual switch from human to software-controlled vehicles. Self-driving cars will have to be able to complete many tasks, such as following the directions of traffic police, merging into traffic, and coping with crowds of people on the street. Currently, this human-robot interaction is extremely restricted.

Another issue to be dealt with is weather. Contemporary autonomous vehicles (AVs) do not do well under changing climate conditions. A self-driving car competition hosted by Hyundai provided a perfect example where AVs dealt well with the road and obstacles in dry, clear conditions, but far less so when the roads were wet and misty. Here cars missed exits, drove into the opposing lane, and mounted the kerb. In years to come, equipping cars with a wider variety of sensors, as well as embedding sensors into the environment, could help to predict road surface changes and speed requirements as weather changes occur.

Finally, future AVs will be more AI based (built upon software programming), and this will bring its own unique challenges for the designers of driverless vehicles. Any software bugs in an autonomous car might let a hacker take control of the vehicle remotely, perhaps locking the passengers inside until a ransom is paid. Car companies will probably examine their software more intently than an app developer would, but they will still miss things. When problems occur, they will need to be fixed as quickly as possible. A car’s software should also be as user friendly as possible; otherwise, passengers may avoid buying autonomous cars altogether.

At present, Tesla cars, the most internet-connected car make available, provides a model for security. After a Tesla crash in Mexico resulted in a battery fire, Tesla pushed a software update to every one of their cars which made the car ride further off the ground, lowering the risk of battery damage due to road debris. This example illustrates how crucial it will become for immediate access to software in order to avoid death and injuries.

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Mercedes-Benz F015 Concept Car Interior (Mercedes-Benz, n.d.)

English for Academic Purposes – Daw, D.

IAE for IT – Module 1 – Descriptive Essays

Name: ............................................................................................................... Section

Source: Hodson, H (2015). Retrieved from www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530082-100-the-four-main-roadblocks-holding-up-self-driving-cars/

Text 4: Past Present and Future of self-driving cars

Although one of the first self-driving car tests was in the 1920s, it was not until the 1939 New York World Fair where the public’s imagination and dream for self-driving vehicles began to truly form. It was there that radio-controlled cars were driven in the busy city. General Motors then developed the Firebird II concept car, which they first exhibited in a TV show called "Key to the Future" in 1956. During the show, a father driving the car would turn a knob to engage an autopilot system. The car would automatically move to a designated lane and start driving itself while the father relaxed in the driver’s seat.

One of the biggest technological breakthroughs for the advancement of driverless cars happened in the 1980's with the availability of cheaper and smaller computer parts. This led to Jaguar Cars developing a vehicle with an autopilot mode that allowed for adaptive cruise control, collision warning, rumble warning, and automatic lane guidance. The vehicle ran autonomously for 27,000 kilometers on public highways in the UK, France, Germany and Italy, and was one of the first successful public projects for AVs.

New members of the automobile manufacturing world have revived the aim of a fully driverless vehicle. In May 2014, Google uploaded a YouTube video showcasing their fully autonomous car. Titled "A First Drive," the video instantly went viral. At the same time, Tesla upgraded their Model S car to give it the ability to drive itself on the highway at 112 kilometers per hour, which they called autopilot mode.

There have also been developments in self-driving public transport. For example, several cities already have fully autonomous public buses. In Lausanne, Switzerland, the EasyMile driverless shuttle drives nearly 3 kilometers across the University of Lausanne. In Trikala, Greece, the CityMobil2 carries 10 passengers along a 2.4-kilometer route. In Zhengzhou, China, the bus company Yutong is testing a self-driving bus that travels up to speeds of 65 kilometers per hour along a 32-kilometer route, while in Wageningen, Netherlands, WEpods can shuttle six passengers at a time along a 27-kilometer route on public roads.

Though these seem like fairly small numbers, some experts believe that as early as 2020 there will be mass production of self-driving vehicles. In time for the 2020 Olympic Games in Japan, Toyota

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1925 Firebird II, invented by General Motors(General Motors, 1956)

English for Academic Purposes – Daw, D.

IAE for IT – Module 1 – Descriptive Essays

Name: ............................................................................................................... Section

hope to show their first autonomous vehicle, while Nissan has announced that they will be ready with autonomous driving technology in multiple vehicles by the same year. 

Source: Abdul-Husain. Y. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.witi.com/articles/493/Self-Driving-Cars:-Past,-Present-and-Future/

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