Fresh：2024自动驾驶汽车的安全注意事项白皮书（英文版）

1Safety Considerations for Autonomous Vehiclesfreshconsulting.comFresh Consulting2Table of ContentsIntroCurrent State of the IndustryThe Players: Companies, Governments, and Advocacy GroupsSafety Considerations for Autonomous Vehicles and RoboticsOutlook and Predictions351023323IntroFully autonomous vehicles have the potential to free up human time and attention, while ultimately making transportation safer. The road to perfecting this technology is long, but engineers have been working towards realizing the technology for almost 100 years. In five years, the self-driving car will celebrate its one-hundredth birthday. Yes, self-driving vehicles are almost a century old. In 1925, the Houdina Radio Control company debuted the “American Wonder,” a 1926 Chandler automobile that was equipped with radio-controlled steering.1 Houdina’s team followed the American Wonder down the streets of New York, controlling it via remote control. In the late ‘70s, Stanford researchers created what could be considered the first example of truly autonomous driving; their Stanford Cart was able to independently navigate a room full of chairs in 5 hours.2 The cart paused for 10 to 15 minutes after every meter of travel to evaluate its surroundings and choose its next path. We’ve come a long way since these projects — in the 1990s, engineers were finally able to create fully-autonomous cars that travel at speeds acceptable for US roadways. The tech has not developed in a vacuum; every other area of the tech industry has advanced as well, broadening the capabilities of the modern self-driving vehicle. Today, semi-autonomous systems, like Tesla’s Autopilot, are so capable that customers feel comfortable putting their vehicle on autopilot for 95 percent of a coast-to-coast road trip.3 44We’re still a few years away from being able to catch a self-driving cab, but still closer than most people probably realize. If the technology for autonomous vehicles has been around since at least the 90s, why haven’t we seen more Level 3 and Level 4 autonomous vehicles5 available for purchase by the public? The answer to this question comes down to one area of the autonomous vehicle industry: safety. Safety is perhaps the most challenging aspect of creating a reliable autonomous vehicle, a task that is already immensely challenging. Maintaining safety in a vehicle without a human behind the wheel requires adaptability, predictive behavior, advanced computer vision, legislation, and data-based research, all of which have taken the last thirty years to reach near-maturity. Throughout this paper, we’ll discuss the obstacles to safety in the autonomous vehicle industry, the reason it’s so essential to realizing the autonomous vehicle vision, and the key players propelling that vision forward. A new technology leap is just a few steps away from hitting the market, and in this report, we’ll cover what it’s going to take to complete those final steps. 5Current State of the IndustryFor so many gen