EAT224 Vehicle Engineering: Autonomous Vehicles Analysis Report

This report delves into the realm of autonomous vehicles, exploring their technological advancements, advantages, and the challenges they face. It discusses the operational aspects of autonomous cars, including their ability to navigate and interpret sensory information. The report highlights the advantages of autonomous vehicles, such as reduced accidents, traffic congestion, and greenhouse gas emissions. It also addresses social and ethical issues related to their implementation, like cybersecurity and the need for regulations. Furthermore, the report examines the potential impact on employment and the future of autonomous cars in shaping modern cities. The provided solution is a feasibility study on the development of a vehicle for a hill climb race, identifying and providing suitable characteristics and costs for the engine, transmission, suspension, and tires, along with justifications for the selections.

1
VEHICLE ENGINEERING
By Name
Course
Instructor
Institution
Location
Date

2
AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES
People around the world are enthusiastic about the development of autonomous cars for public
use. An autonomous car refers to the cars which operate without any human control and it does
not require any human intervention during its operation. According to (Menze and Geiger
2015) stated that the modern autonomous cars can detect changes in their surroundings,
categories different types of objects which they detect, interpret sensory information to recognize
the correct navigation paths whilst obeying transportation rules.
Considering the advancements which have been achieved in giving the correct response to the
unanticipated situations where either a backlash can occur in the vehicular system or some
medium in the external surroundings may not perform as expected by the internal –prototype.
The modern automobile companies keep improvising modern autonomous features in their
recent models (Litman, T. (2015). The advancement in technology, data analysis, storage and
communication are considered as the realm of the autonomous cars.
Many challenges are facing autonomous cars such as;
 The navigation of autonomous cars needs many complex social interactions, which currently
are still tough for robots. The autonomous vehicles are a long way to go in many public
roads. Reliability, in this case, is the greatest problem.
 Cybersecurity will be likely one of the greatest challenges. The autonomous cars will be
prone to be hacked, as the autonomous vehicles get better and more connected, some
elements in the society will try to come up with ways o0jn how they will get into them and
disrupt their normal operations.
 There will need to design regulations before the autonomous vehicles are introduced into the
public roads. One will need to come up with ways through which the cars will be able to
interact with human drivers.
 Bad weather in the public roads makes everything trickier. Just like the human eyes, the car
sensors cannot be able to work effectively in the rain, snow or fog conditions. The sensitivity
of the sensors in the autonomous will reduce in bad weather and hence making it risky and
prone to accidents.
Advantages of autonomous vehicles

3
There are many advantages associated with the introduction of autonomous vehicles on the
public roads and they include;
i) Reduced accidents
Autonomous vehicles have potential; to reduce the number of deaths which occurs in the roads.
The number of accidents which occur as a result of driver distraction will greatly reduce.
ii) Reduced traffic congestion
From the studies which have been carried out in different parts of the world, it has been
concluded that with the increased number of autonomous vehicles, it can be possible to eliminate
stop-and-goo waves which are normally caused by the human driving behaviour (Krueger,
Rashidi and Rose, 2016). Also, the reduced number of accidents will lead to a reduction in
traffic congestion, since 25% of traffic congestion is caused by road accidents.
iii) Reduced greenhouse gases emission.
The reduction in traffic congestion will directly contribute to the reduction in greenhouse gasses
emissions. also, since the autonomous vehicles will be driven by software it will be possible for
them to be programmed to reduce the emissions to a great extent.
iv) Increased lane capacity
From the research that has been carried out in the past, it has been concluded that the
introduction of the autonomous vehicles will increase the highway capacity by 100% and at the
same time to increase the expressway speeds by more than 20% (Dolgov et al 2010).
v) Facilitate transport accessibility
The autonomous vehicles will be able to be well-positioned to offer first/last mile services to be
able to connect commuters to public transportation. Majority of the large cities in the world have
challenges of offering sufficient public transportation.
vi) Lower fuel consumption

4
The autonomous car's technology can greatly enhance fuel economy, enhancing it by 4 to 10 per
cent by decelerating and accelerating more smoothly than human drivers. Further enhancements
in the autonomous cars are achieved through the reduction of the distance through which the cars
have to travel and at the same time the increased roadway capacity.
Social and ethical issues
On the other hand, ethical and social challenges are generally presented in the form of an
idealized unsolved decision-making problem, which is normally referred to as a trolley
challenge, which is grossly misleading. There is an argument that an applied engineering ethical
approach is what is required, the technique should be utilized, hence meaning that it should focus
on analyzing n of the complex real-world engineering challenges. The software which will be
used in the controlling of the autonomous vehicles are very essential and they should be handled
with a lot of caution and considering both ethical and social issues.
The future of autonomous cars
The autonomous cars are set to be as life-changing as their introduction. The modern cities have
been shaped largely by the mobility which is mainly achieved by the motor vehicles, offering
transport services to the people and their properties alike and supported by the major road
networks globally. Up until recent times, the motor vehicle industry has been an extension of the
human ambulatory system, which greatly depends on the commands from the driver. There are
many drawbacks which are associated with the introduction of the autonomous cars, it is
projected that the introduction of the autonomous cars will lead to unemployment of the skilled
labour i.e. the drivers

5
References
Dolgov, D., Thrun, S., Montemerlo, M., & Diebel, J. (2010). Path planning for autonomous
vehicles in unknown semi-structured environments. The International Journal of Robotics
Research, 29(5), 485-501.
Krueger, R., Rashidi, T. H., & Rose, J. M. (2016). Preferences for shared autonomous
vehicles. Transportation research part C: emerging technologies, 69, 343-355.
Litman, T. (2015). Autonomous vehicle implementation predictions: Implications for transport
planning (No. 15-3326).
Menze, M., & Geiger, A. (2015). Object scene flow for autonomous vehicles. In Proceedings of
the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (pp. 3061-3070).