The Invention Of Self Driving Cars

The computing innovation that is based on my computational artifact that I chose was self driving cars. The computational artifact that I chose is based on the innovation of self driving cars. Self driving cars are vehicles that can drive safely by themselves with little or no human input. The purpose of self driving cars is to get from point a to point b in a safe manner.Self driving cars will change the world due to many factors. Self driving cars are becoming more popular as time goes on. People are realizing that self driving cars are much safer than human drivers. Although self driving cars can make mistakes, they can limit the number of tragic accidents that occur. The reduced rates of car crashes are a result of the high tech technology software that the car acts upon; the sensors,cameras and lidar which the car uses to make a map of its surroundings. As of now, self driving cars aren't at their maximum potential because they still require human assistance to some extent, but in the future with improved technology, we would have cars that don't need human drivers at all. According to the scale of autonomous driving, were at level 2 out of 5. In the future it will become fully autonomous but that will take time, for now they can only do so much.

In order to do this assignment, I first created a google document and then went off to do my research on my computational artifact. I eventually picked self driving cars. I had to do a lot of research because so much of it conflicted so I only used reliable sources for the explore task. I looked not only at articles but at videos as well, keeping in mind how reliable is the source and is this information correct. Then I had to find an image that I felt portrayed self driving cars in an honest way. I wanted to show people how self driving cars worked in a fast and easy manner.

Self driving cars have many uses. They can be harmful or beneficial. The first harmful effect of self driving cars is that they can be easily mislead. Right now in order to drive by themselves, self driving cars need lidar. Lidar basically shoots light at a target and it then measures the reflected light to measure the distance to a target. The problem with this is that lidar can be mislead. Danielle Muoio stated that “he was able to trick a sensor into thinking objects were there when they weren't, and vice versa” (2016). The second harmful effect of self driving cars is that people will lose their jobs. Companies would use self driving cars to deliver service to consumers, rather than hire people to deliver their goods, thus reducing labor costs. So self driving vehicles are taking over these people’s jobs and it’s happening fast. Anita Balakrishnan stated that “When autonomous vehicle saturation peaks, U.S. drivers could see job losses at a rate of 25,000 a month, or 300,000 a year, according to a report from Goldman Sachs Economics Research” (2017). Due to this we would have tons of people looking for new jobs due to self driving cars. Self driving cars also have beneficial aspects to them as well. The one I found was self driving cars can help the elderly and disabled get around places with convenience. In an article I found “The elderly also are the biggest victims of traffic accidents in Japan—53% of people killed in accidents were 65 or older” (Ramsey, Inada, kubota, 2016). Self driving cars would be harmful to some people but it would also help others.

Self driving cars use different types of data to navigate through the roads. Self driving cars collect data from radar, lidar, computer vision, sonar, and GPS. These help to identify the path, avoid objects, and read any signs along the way.When self driving cars operate, data is collected which gets turned into an algorithm to help the car make decisions. Other self driving cars can also use the data gained from other cars to make the roads safer. Hannah Augur stated “by absorbing more data through driving and real experience, it may learn. It may learn that items in the road will cause other drivers to swerve, or how to anticipate when a driver will change lanes” (2015). One data privacy concern would be that vehicles can be hacked. The vehicles can be hacked and driven into buildings or somewhere where the passenger doesn’t want to go. This could cause a lot of damage not only to buildings and property but to people as well.