Achieving Complete Autonomy in

Self-Driving vehicles.
Synopsis
CSE 411 - Seminar
Submitted By
Sammit Arun Nadkarni
B. Tech. Computer Science Engineering
Semester VII
Work submitted under the guidance of
Ms Sukhwant Kaur

School of Engineering and Information Technology

The last decade has seen massive developments in the field of

automotive technology. From GPS to parking assist we are now
seriously considering the possibility of completely autonomous
vehicles that can pretty much conduct themselves on the road
with minimal human intervention. Tesla Motors has already
launched self-driving cars where autonomous driving is their
USP. Although tremendous research has gone into this discipline,
the varying road conditions and driving rules globally are big
influencers in terms of how this technology can be brought to its
flaws. Over the last few years after the launch of autonomous
cars many accidents have been reported which were allegedly
caused by malfunction or inadequate technology. Our aim is to
understand this technology and to comment on how these
technologies may be perfected or analyze if they can be
perfected at all to the point where they can deal with a dynamic
road environment with the help of intelligent algorithms.

ABSTRACT

1. Introduction
Obstacle recognition is one of the most challenging fields in autonomous
driving along with the artificial intelligence which is used to made decisions
based on the detected environment. The hardware and software to achieve
complete autonomous driving is already being developed today although it
has still to be optimized and perfected before it can be deployed to the
masses safely.
It has been shown that GPS,IMU and LIDAR data can be used to generate a
high definition map which can be used for localization.. Over the past few
decades, attempts have been made to put out a complete autonomous car on
the public roads only to be restricted to a subset of the full driving task such
as highway-only, parking-only and throttle/break only [1]. Developing an
entire system top to bottom requires the combination and coherence of
appropriate sensors, computational hardware, networking and software
infrastructure.
Previous attempts have been successful to the point of semi-autonomous
driving only to be limited by human intervention and hardware limitations.
While fully autonomous driving has remained an important but elusive goal,
many notable attempts and several important milestones have been reached.
The Stanford Driving teams autonomous vehicle has been the most
successful with its Volkswagen Passat named Junior. The most successful
demonstration was closed to pedestrians and bicyclists, featured wide roads
with speeds under 35MPH and no traffic lights [2]. Although separate
modules which tackle each of these segments separately exists, combining
these together in real-time system remains the primary challenge. This paper
tries to explore the technologies which have been used in attempting to
achieve this goal.

2. Motivation
The advancement in hardware and software has allowed for powerful
computing power to be utilized along with smart algorithms however a fully
fail proof system is yet to be reached. Complete reliance and trust of selfdriving cars can only be achieved when the system works with a zero
percent failure rate, a simple example of this can be seen in Dubais
Driverless Metro which is completely automated. Therefor in achieving this
goal there will be significant effects in road transport such as decreased or
zero accident rate, reduced congestion and increased efficiency and
convenience.
The challenges which remain to be tackled include narrow roads,
crosswalks, and intersections as well as the primary safety concerns. Finally
the hardest perception and reasoning tasks still remain an unsolved area in
which a vehicle must navigate by demonstrating reasoning skills in
unexpected scenarios at nearly the proficiency of a human driver.

3. Objective and Scope

An autonomous driving system is made up of certain modules which are
tightly coupled together to achieve a self-driving car. Changes need to be
made in each module in order for a solution to be implemented throughout
the system. The areas to focus on include:
Hardware- incorporating new hardware which not only allows for
detection of objects but also accurate identification of the subject in order
to make fuzzy decisions, i.e. identifying between an animal and a human.
Software-previously software is made to recover or restart no matter
what in a competition environment, but software has to be developed
keeping safety as the top priority and program the ability of making fuzzy
decisions which would mimic the rational decisions a human driver
would make.
Unsupervised laser calibration- calibrating lasers with many
simultaneous beams has been proven to be a challenge however new
methods allow for unsupervised multi-beam laser calibration [3].

 Mapping and localization-Mapping the environment and placing the car

accurately is an important part as it determines the locality of the car.
GPS,IMU and Velodyne LIDAR data is used to generate a high definition
infrared map that can be used for localization.[1]
Object Recognition- In certain situations a self-driving vehicle requires
specific details to made sophisticated precedency decisions. Therefor
more detailed and object identification is required which not only
recognizes the object by analyses it too.
Traffic light detection-The importance of detection of traffic lights
remains apparent however the method used can vary. Traditional methods
include the use of a camera to detect the color of the signal, this method
can also be extended to accessing the signal network information for a
more reliable detection.
Trajectory Planning- Driving in realistic road traffic where certain
factors such as traffic flow, congestion, emergencies and driving
maneuvers are involved, intelligent trajectory planning is required.
Algorithms provide for reactive obstacles avoidance by the combined
usage of steering and breaking/acceleration [4].

4. Summary
Self-Driving cars along with all the convenience and advantages that come
with it still require many more innovations to be made. Choosing the right
hardware in order to build an inexpensive robust system as well as
optimization with a zero percent failure rate is required. Software not only
needs to be smart but capable of making rational decisions that a human
driver would make. Algorithms need to be designed to work fast enough that
they are able to execute in real-time. Mapping of the environment no matter
what the weather condition requires more than one method of detection with
high accuracy. Trajectory planning will need to be able to adapt to the rules
and paradigms of different regions around the world. Total autonomy may
still take time to achieve, the changes that are required are slowly falling into
place. Through modifying existing technologies and coming up with new
innovations, total autonomy can be achieved slowly but surely.

5. References
[1]
[2]

[3]
[4]

J. Levinson and S. Thrun, Robust vehicle localization in urban environments

using probabilistic maps, 2010 IEEE Int. Conf. Robot. Autom., pp. 4372
4378, 2010.
J. Levinson, J. Askeland, J. Becker, J. Dolson, D. Held, S. Kammel, J. Z.
Kolter, D. Langer, O. Pink, V. Pratt, M. Sokolsky, G. Stanek, D. Stavens, A.
Teichman, M. Werling, and S. Thrun, Towards fully autonomous driving:
Systems and algorithms, IEEE Intell. Veh. Symp. Proc., no. Iv, pp. 163168,
2011.
J. Levinson and S. Thrun, Unsupervised calibration for multi-beam lasers,
Springer Tracts Adv. Robot., vol. 79, pp. 179193, 2014.
A. Teichman and S. Thrun, Tracking-based semi-supervised learning, Int.
J. Rob. Res., vol. 31, no. 7, pp. 804818, 2012.