How Can Autonomous Transportation Be Safe for Tomorrow?
Automation is rapidly changing and expanding across sectors, due to the spectacular advancements made in artificial intelligence and machine learning, in recent years. In the car industry, automated and autonomous vehicles are to become the norm, with many players embarking on the development of autonomous or semi-autonomous cars in light of AI.
The artificial intelligence in the Transportation Market is projected to grow at a compounded annual growth of 17.87% from 2017 to 2030. The market size is expected to grow from USD 1.21 Billion in 2017 to USD 10.30 billion by 2030. The primarily driven factors of such growth are driven by the demand for assisted driving, increasing the level of automation, enhanced connectivity, and transportation.
There are, however, challenges as we are transiting to automated and fully autonomous vehicles. The primary function of automated and autonomous vehicles is to create a safer outcome for the roads and respect the road safety code in driving. Automated and autonomous vehicles also have the purpose of transporting passengers from point A to Z safely and efficiently. Although automated and autonomous vehicles, will encounter many other road users and unprecedented scenarios, how will AV respond to those situations? Moreover, are they programmed to save the passenger or pedestrian?
Nayva, an autonomous vehicle French-based company, is working to create fully electric autonomous vehicles in the transportation sector of shuttle buses, which is currently operating in downtown Las Vegas. The shuttle bus can transport up to eight passengers, with a computer vision system and electronic kerb sensors. The shuttle bus does not go more than 15 mph. Although in 2017, according to thegurardian.com, the brand-new shuttle bus has crashed with a human truck driver in less than two hours after the launch.
“Jenny Wong, a passenger on the shuttle at the time of the crash, told local news station KSNV: “The shuttle just stayed still. And, we were like, and it’s going to hit us, it is going to hit us. And, then it hit us. “The shuttle couldn’t move back. The shuttle just stayed still.” (thegurardian.com)
Even though the truck driver was at fault for the crash, this issue could have easily been avoided if Nayva has implemented the P2V (Pedestrian to vehicle) and P2X ( pedestrian to everything) software that !important has created for the safety of passengers and vehicles.
!important has implemented critical artificial intelligence technologies that are in need to be invented to create a safer environment of automated and self-driving vehicles through the pedestrian perspective. At the moment, numerous tech companies, such as Nayva are focused on building software that protects the passengers rather than pedestrians and everything else around.
The solutions implemented by !important will synthesizes the pedestrian data based on their behaviour, which will be studied through their application and tools, that will provide safety-critical data and routes for any and every type of transportation, in real-time. The goal of !important is to eliminate fatalities and crashes. To avoid the accident by Nayva, !important software would have prevented the issue by slowing the vehicle at a prolonged speed, which would have seen the truck way before and would have given the truck driver a little more time to reflect on his route and avoid the avoidable collision.
Technology has driven changes in the transportation industry, with significant challenges remaining. Companies must address these issues as the current way of creating vehicles, and self-driving vehicles are to protect the passengers from pedestrians, and these obstacles need to be re-architected for tomorrow’s future, in industry 4.0 and the third wave of AI.
