A Beginner’s Guide to Self-Driving Cars

Everything you should know before your next conversation about self-driving cars

Some call it a marvel of technology. Some call it a fad. Self-driving cars are constantly making the headlines. These vehicles, designed to carry passengers from point A to B without a human maneuver, are promised to bring greater mobility, reduce street congestion and fuel consumption, and create safer roads.

Driverless vehicles are hardly a novel concept anymore, but what is really going on in the autonomous car industry? How do self-driving cars work? Who are making these cars? Why is it taking this long? This article will answer these questions.

How do self-driving cars work

To reach a destination, a driverless car needs to know the route, understand its surrounding, observe traffic rules, and make correct judgments when interacting with other vehicles and pedestrians on the road. To accomplish all this, it relies on the following key technologies:

• Camera: to see things like lanes and traffic lights
• Radar: to sense objects, especially the big ones, and determine their distances
• Lidar: also to sense objects as Radar, but it’s much better in detecting small objects and…