A

Seminar Report
On

Driverless Car
By

Submitted for partial fulfillment of the requirements for award the degree of

BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY
(Mechanical Engineering)
Submitted to-

Mechanical Department

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Govt. Engineering College, Banswara,
2015-2016

Table of Contents

Contents
ABSTRACT........................................................................................................................................1
1

INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................2
1.1

What is a Robot car ?............................................................................................................2

Evolution of Robot Cars..............................................................................................................3

Key aspects of Robot Car............................................................................................................3

ALTERNATE VISIONS.............................................................................................................5

COLLISION AVOIDANCE........................................................................................................6

5.1

Ford Blind spot Collision Avoidance System:.....................................................................6

5.2

Stability Control system:......................................................................................................7

GOOGLE CARS..........................................................................................................................9
6.1

Google Entry :.......................................................................................................................9

6.2

Technology behind Google Cars........................................................................................10

Summary:..........................................................................................................................................12
REFERENCES:.................................................................................................................................14

ABSTRACT
This report gives

an introduction about the advancements in science towards a robot driven

car .An introduction to collision avoidance system and an overview of the experimental studies
of Google robot car are also presented. This paper also presents various collision avoidance
techniques in case of adversities like bad weather ,bad roads etc.

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INTRODUCTION
This cars is a pretty good driver quoted by Mikaela from the movie Transformers pointing
at the empty drivers seat referring to an Autobot.
Soon automatically driven cars is going to be a reality. Robot cars are electronic controlled
systems functioning in a reflexive way that automatically adjusts itself to provide assistance to
the driver or to maneuver the vehicle all by itself. Robot cars are equipped with autopilot
systems which can drive by itself. There had been extensive experimentation on auto pilots cars
since 1980s where Mercedes Benz came up with a concept of Robot van. Since then there were
many experiments conducted by various automobile companies and some research laboratories
.The primary aim of autopilot systems is to reduce the automobile related deaths by using a
computer as

researchers feel that computers perform consistently better than humans under

testing conditions. This paper presents the evolution of driverless cars from the conception of the
idea to the latest Google robot cars. Collision avoidance is said to be one of the driving factors
for the design of robot cars. Collision avoidance is the process is preventing a vehicle from
colliding with any other vehicle or object. The collision avoidance is

not an exclusive

concern for automobiles it can also be referred to Collision avoidance(Spacecraft),Collision

avoidance(aircraft).

What is a Robot car ?

Robot cars are to the cars equipped with artificial intelligence software. This technology is
required for self driving cars and is already tested in some of the concept cars. There is an
incremental path to get us there .Computers are considered to be the most important part of the
robot cars.

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Evolution of Robot Cars

Computers are the most important components of a Robot car. The evolution started in 1977 in a
Japanese laboratory when the computers are much slower than they are today. The fact is that
todays computers are more than 1000 times faster than they are in the 1970 T sukuba
Mechanical Engineering Lab in Japan is the first one to experiment with driverless cars in
1977.They came up with a car equipped with special hardware. The car thus developed could
achieve a speed of 30Km/Hr on a clearly marked course by tracking the white street markers
laid through the course. Mercedes built the robot car in 1980 by converting the S class Mercedes.
The car achieved a speed exceeding 175Km/hr .This achievement by Mercedes with a team of
professors has heavily influenced robot car research and funding decisions worldwide. The
Defense Advanced Research in 1980 has funded for autonomous land vehicle has achieved the
first road demonstration.
The VaMP and Vita-2 of Daimler-Benz is the first step towards truly autonomous cars. They
were able to drive in human traffic with out long interventions using computer vision to
recognize rapidly moving obstacles. In 1994 with a safety driver and the guests onboard the
twins drove for more than 1000 miles in normal traffic on a highway at speed up to 130Km/hr.
An year later in 1995 the autonomous Mercedes Benz took a trip for more than 1600 kms using
quick process computer vision along with microprocessor to respond in real time. This car also
drove up to 158 kms without any human intervention. In the same year Carnegie Mellon
University designed a no hand across semi automatic car which used neural networks to control
the steering wheel but the brakes and throttle are human controlled.

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Key aspects of Robot Car

Existing Infrastructure is sufficient to bring the Robot cars on to the road to share
the space with cars driven by people. But may be with the assistance of small non
physical infrastructure like networks and databases.

Safety could be a major reason to take this dream to a reality as automated

driving if can be implemented to handle all intricacies of driving will be provide
safe and regulated traffic. If the automated driving has to be implemented then it has
to have a safety record superior to human driving and much more effective than alert
drivers.

Robot cars can be scaled to an extent of driving the car autonomously with out even
the need for monitoring by the occupants inside the car. The cars if given the
destination will require the least assistance and can navigate on its own.

The concept of building a Robot car emphasizes focus on alternate fuels like
electricity and could pave way for electric cars to share the existing market of
gasoline car.

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ALTERNATE VISIONS

The most effective could be building the special infrastructure like highways and lanes
that would allow computer driven vehicles only apart from human driven cars. This
vision would also answer the important question of safety as these cars would operate in

special lanes which does not involve any human intervention.

Convoy technology-The lead car would be driven by an expert driver and directs a
virtual train of self driven vehicles to follow suit. This kind of implementation reduces
the complexity involved in multiple drivers in a convoy.

Semi automatic-This kind may be in need of some kind of human assistance in

judgment on navigation or getting out of an odd situation, but this may not need 100% of
human attention and hence makes the job of driving simple and less intense to the
occupant.

An early robot car is one that runs on a dedicated guide ways. There is a practical
difficulty in implementing this vision on a large scale as the process of customizing the
highways gets more complicate

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COLLISION AVOIDANCE
Collision avoidance is said to be one of the driving factors for the design of robot cars. Before
describing the collision avoidance techniques let us consider the given facts related to United
States of America.

A million injuries and loss of 35,000 lives in USA alone because of accidents in one year.

One person in every 6 minutes loose their life in India because of road accidents(According
to 98 statistics )

230 billion dollars of accident cost

So the task ahead would be to minimize the man made errors .This can be done by reducing
human intervention in driving the vehicle by some external assistance . Collision avoidance
system equips the car with a set of sensors that warns the driver of any dangers that may lie
ahead on the road. The suggestions from the system could be about the proximity of the
surrounding cars ,estimates about the average speed to be maintained when approaching a curve,
information about weather or traffic.
Let us look at the various Collision avoidance system that are tested for implementation in
the future cars.
Ford Blind spot Collision Avoidance System:
Ford is coming up with a collision warning support technology that warns the occupants about
the objects
in the surroundings that may be a hazard. The car uses a radar that is fixed at the front and rear
sides of the car .The system reacts to the external hazards by warning the driver using sound
chimes and some red lights fitted at the wind shield. If the hazard still continues then the car
takes the control and stops the car .
The major features of the Fords Collision
system are
1) Ford blind spot information system that alerts the driver about moving vehicles driving
through the lot while backing the car in the parking lot when his/her view is blocked by
cars.

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Figure 1 Activation of sensors in a parking lot when

2) Alert about the external hazards and takes control by pressing the brake hard if the
hazard continues .
3) Alerts the driver when an vehicle behind his/her car suddenly shifts the lanes .This
will assist when the vehicle moves in the blind spot zone of the driver.
4) Lane departure warning system alerts when the car moves on the lane markers and
hence cautions the drift .

Stability Control system:

It is an electronic stability control system which uses sensors to keep track of the loss in
traction in the
vehicle which enables the antilock brake system to apply individual brakes to keep the vehicle
on the intended path.
Let us take a look at how the stability control works. Consider the car is approaching a sharp
turn and the driver will enter the curve too quickly and exceed the ability to hold to the road
through the turn and during this the car starts skidding and moves away and results in loss of
control. Stability control system pulls the brakes and to help rotate the vehicle to the drivers
intended pat

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Figure 2 Stability control pulsates the brakes of individual wheels to help "rotate" the vehicle to the

These antiskid systems can assist in most of the critical situations but it cannot help the driver
when the car is speeding at 100 mph and attempting a 90degree turn

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GOOGLE CARS
Eric Shmidt the CEO of Google once said that Its a bug that cars were invented before
computers.Your car should drive itself.

Google Entry :
After revolutionizing the web search, Google is revolutionizing the way people drive their
cars. Recently
Google revealed in its official blog about the companies findings on the technology that enables
the car to drive on its own. They reported that the test cars already clocked 1000 miles with out
any human intervention and more than 140,000 miles with minimum human control. This data
itself shows how the concept of automatic driven cars has evolved from the time when the car
used to trace a marked line to today where the car automatically stops at traffic signals and
drives for long distances .
The experiment was conducted on seven cars and is manned during the tests. Each vehicle has a
person sitting in the drivers seat ready to take control from the automatic mode in case
something go wrong with the system.
The person sitting in the car is also responsible for monitoring the software operations on the
computer. Google took the project seriously and are trying to make the project flawless and
successful .

Figure 3 Source:Google

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10
10

Google hired the engineers from the DARPA challenge. DARPA-It is a US military grand
challenge .The US department of Defense announced a grand challenge to for US-based teams to
produce a vehicle that could autonomously navigate and reach a target in the desert of the south
western USA .Today many international teams also participate in the event to compete in a
fully autonomous vehicle races under various testing conditions like rough unpaved terrains
,suburban setting(2005), urban setting(2007 DARPA urban challenge) ,etc. Google is
proposing that computer can be a better driver than human under the right circumstances and
in that sense people would feel be more secure in those cars than self driven.
Now the real question comes-What is that Google aiming at ? Probably aiming to develop a
Google car OS. The near future will answer that question.
As already mentioned the company is in the view that it is cars that should have come after
computers but not the other way. It should be the computers that drive the machine but not the
human. With the increase in population and ever growing traffic the daily commuting has
become a major challenge and occupies substantial time .Time is so precious and people are
looking at ways to be more productive or get entertained even during travel.

Technology behind Google Cars

Google equipped the automated cars with video cameras , radio sensors, laser range finders and
Google
maps to identify the traffic around .Initially conventional cars were sent to map significant
features of the route like the lane markers and traffic signs. These maps captured by the
conventional cars are used to familiarize the environment and characteristics in advance to
the automated cars. The terrain data obtained by these conventional cars is processed by the
Google data centers for processing and then the cars uses Artificial intelligence to mimic the
decisions made by the human driver. The car can automatically react at the lights and stop signs
and has an announcement system which cautions the person at the driving seat on approaching a
crosswalk or a school zone.
Reports revealed that the automated cars react more quickly and consistently than humans and
hence can make the roads safer. When compared to humans computers can use the space more
efficiently with better response times which makes the roads more feasible for additional traffic.

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11

Figure 4 Source :Google

Another distinctive feature of the Google cars is that the car can be programmed according to
the personalities of the occupant. Cautious and aggressive. If driven in the cautious mode the
car is like to give way to another speeding vehicle on the other hand if driven in the
aggressive mode the car would like to be the first to go.
The fuel consumption is a value add to the proposition as the heavy foot stop and go procedure
can be eliminated by the automation and there by yielding a better fuel efficiency than human
driven cars and hence can save the Nations fuel costs if implemented at a large scale.
A distant vision does excite some of the optimists that the vehicles can drive by itself when
summoned/commanded electronically as in the case of TV series Night Rider and the movie
Batman. In this case fewer cars would be needed as they can be shared by people .Like the same
car after dropping the husband in the office can get back to home and can be used for other
purposes . However there could be many legal issues that could delay the inevitable.
Accountability and interaction is one such big challenge from a legal point of view

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Summary:

Robocars are soon going to be a reality .Google cars which already clocked 1000 miles
is an indication towards this milestone.
The system uses artificial intelligence to either assist the driver in collision avoidance or
drive the vehicle by itself.
Collision avoidance is an extremely important development as many as 1.2 million lives
are lost worldwide in accidents.

Saves hundreds of billions of accident cost by reducing the accident rate.

Recent report of Insurance Institute for Highway Safety stated that the impact of
automated control systems in car can save 10,000 lives a year when compared to 1200
lives saved by the safety equipment like airbags
Blind spot information and lane detection system, auto brake system are few techniques to
avoid
collisions under different conditions

Military Prompted-Military demand and desire for such automated systems by the
general public is one of the major driving factor towards this vision.
E cars-Move towards computer equipped cars will also focus on alternate fuels like electricity

Greener: Efficient electric cars could reduce urban car greenhouse gas emissions by 80%.

Electric cars would reduce the dependency on oil producing countries and hence
brings in stability to the transporting sector.
Ultra light electric cars can be more economical and efficient that heavy passenger vehicles.

Completely autonomous vehicles will be beneficial for people who are looking at ways to
be more productive or get entertained even during travel
Autonomous vehicles can also ride on the streets safely with human driven cars and
pedestrians.

Traffic congestion and parking problems can be handled more efficiently with the advent
of robot cars.
Cars that can be summoned-Same car can used efficiently for multiple purposes by
multiple people

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Robotaxi , a car that can be summoned using a cell phone which will bring itself to
you on demand and gives you the freedom to choose the right car.

Mandate can made by developed countries about the computer controlled vehicle
control for every car in the near future to have safe and efficient traffic .

Already the Anti lock Braking System(ABS) needed to stabilize the car in turnings is
becoming a must feature in the new model cars.

There is a shift in auto companies affinity towards developing automated

systems from providing safety features like airbags to prevent the accident
rather than minimizing the impact of accident.

Many companies are coming with image processors to identify the presence
of an obstruction like a pedestrian or the vehicle.

However there could be many legal issues that could delay the inevitable.
Accountability and interaction is one such big challenge from a legal point of view.

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REFERENCES:

Where Robocars can really take us : By Brad Templeton

Google cars-a self driven Machine : A technical article in Dazeinfo
Google cars drive themselves in traffic : The New York times editorial

Stability control from How Stuff Works

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