What if the car that came to pick you up was driverless? In as early as three years you may be surprised by an autonomous vehicle yourself. This surprise may become very common. Market experts predict self driving cars will be hitting the market by 2020!

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Autonomous cars or self - driving cars, are cars that have the ability to drive themselves without human intervention, with the help of a computer and several thousand sensors imbedded in its body. Companies like Tesla, Uber and Google are in the process of developing such cars, and it’s a race to the finish, to see which company makes the perfect autonomous car.

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As much as people are looking forward to driverless cars, there are real concerns about the safety of both the passengers and other cars on the road. Not to mention pedestrians, cyclists, etc. Several concerns about the construction of better autonomous car - friendly roads, highways and parking spots, were also raised.

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All these concerns were put to rest at the 2017 Pennsylvania Automated Vehicle Summit, held at the test track of Thomas D. Larson Institute at Bellefonte. Academic and industry experts from around the world joined graduate and undergraduate Penn State students to look at a real life simulation of Uber’s first self - driven Volvo XC 90 SUV.

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Sean Brennan, Professor of Mechanical and nuclear engineering at Penn State’s main campus, demonstrated heavy-duty fuel economy estimation and powertrain characterization; “a real-time, six-degrees of freedom, map-based vehicle pose estimator; and a highway driving simulator to measure risk acceptance.”

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“There are fundamental behavioral differences between virtual reality, augmented reality and real environment interactions,” said Nick Dow, a graduate student studying mechanical engineering. “This research will measure how levels of user immersion affect risk-taking and other behaviors.”  

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The most dynamic of revelations at this two day conference was the mobile road - mapping platform which was used to map every centimetre of the LTI track, using lasers, cameras and GPS pointers. “Literally, we could throw change down onto the track and be able to detect where the change is at using our sensors.” said Bobby Leary, a Mechanical Engineering major.

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Talk about pavement signs, better roads and parking spaces was also an important part of this conference. The presentation also included that driverless cars would benefit handicapped and elderly people and prevent road fatalities. Whether we like it or not, autonomous cars are the future of driving.