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not in accordance with the season of year is a serious
barrier to the usage of unmanned vehicles.
Cost of the Test Sample. To date, the cost of the
test sample of Google unmanned vehicle is more
than 150 thousand dollars. The main cost (about
70,000 dollars) constitutes the usage of an optical
sensor LIDAR.
Dependence on a Navigation Signal Quality.
Usage of GPS or GLONASS systems to position
unmanned vehicles causes difficulties while
operating in tunnels, canyons and in other places
having unstable level of GPS or GLONASS signals
coverage.
In the dispute between the supporters and the
opponents of unmanned vehicles the formers’
position is more preferred because standalone
machine scans the surrounding area over a very
large radius (60-80 meters) and therefore the amount
of data, which is taken into account to make
solutions is much larger. This is a human-driver who
might miss a child suddenly popping-up on the road.
This is a human-driver who might linger and get
scared. This is a human-driver who would have at
least 0.5 seconds reaction to a sudden obstacle on
the road. This is a human-driver who regularly
exceeds the traffic speed.
A computer system does not have all the
mentioned above disadvantages, in a fraction of a
second and for many tens of meters, it will notice the
people running to or crossing the road, or standing
on the sidelines, and it will instantly make an
optimal decision. An autopilot will timely detect a
pedestrian moving quickly enough to get under the
car wheels, and then that autopilot will slow down
its car to predict the movement of this pedestrian and
to eventually eliminate accident.
If there are any objects on the road sidelines
hindering the view, an autopilot will slow down up
to a full stop to ensure there are no pedestrians
where they can appear provoking accidents.
An autopilot will react faster than a human in the
case of emergency and will handle the situation
using an optimal program. If an accident does occur
its consequences will be less severe. The car’s
computer will immediately notify emergency
services. Images from the cameras will instantly get
transferred on board and into the ambulance. All
these actions will reduce the time and will increase
the chances of the injured people. The computer will
record all the telemetry, and that records will
simplify the legal disputes.
Even if an accident would be caused by a fault of
a computer system the odds according to the overall
statistics are that such an accident would happen 10
times less frequently than when a car would be
driven by a human.
In the same time, the running nowadays polemics
of supporters and opponents of unmanned cars is
based on an objective contradiction, originating from
the fact that we are currently trying to combine an
informal system of movement of vehicles with a
formal one. The dominant of the former system is a
person (a car driver) while the dominant of the latter
is an unmanned vehicle system (actually a robot).
The person is weakly formalizable object, and the
robot is a machine, though endowed with some traits
of “intelligence”. Simultaneous participation of such
diverse entities in highways traffic does designate
the difficulties that the road traffic regulation
organizations are trying to resolve.
From the objective contradiction, we have
outlined above, follows the technical problem
associated with the collection of the road traffic data.
Currently, the entire set of technical systems
displaying information about a road situation
focuses on humans’ perception, their senses and
their ways of information gathering and processing.
The cars sensors capabilities could in some respects
be better, and in other respects - worse than the ones
of humans. In addition, humans always use their
experience and intuition, their ability to foresee the
situation, to analyze the behavior of the other
participants of the road traffic.
It is easy to assume that a cooperative
satisfaction of the requirements of the two systems
will lead to an increase of complexity of the traffic
control systems and to the growth of negative ratings
of the practical usage of unmanned vehicles (first of
all by the undisciplined drivers).
The objective contradiction is possible to be
resolved in two ways:
1. Developing regulations on driving unmanned
vehicles on dedicated lines or highways only: in
this case a new model of the road traffic control
is created, new requirements for the operational
information gathering systems is developed, new
protocols of communication between vehicles
and maintenance services and a set of documents
determining legal responsibilities of the road
traffic participants and regulators are elaborated.
Detailed development and implementation of this
option will solve the main problems of the road
transportation organization - reducing accidents,
reducing costs, improving the environment.
2. The organization of the group traffic of
unmanned vehicles with one or more driver-
instructors: in this case the road traffic rules have
to be revised considering particular properties of
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