How do smart cars work?

The term smart or self-driving cars refers to cars that have the ability to move and sense the environment around them without a driver.

Experiments in manufacturing smart cars began in the 1920s and 1930s, and the first smart car appeared in the 1980s, through the projects of Carnegie Mellon University and Auto Life in 1984, and the Eureka Prometheus project launched by Mercedes-Benz in October The first was in 1986, in cooperation with many car manufacturers, electronics producers, institutes and universities.

The company was able to manufacture many models of smart cars, culminating in its attempts to re-engineer the "W140 S" class car, which was able to drive almost completely autonomous 1,678 kilometers from Munich to Copenhagen in 1995.

Since then, many companies and research organizations have started developing smart car models.

How do smart cars work?

There are many systems inside smart cars to make them capable of self-driving without a driver, as they have remote sensors, which can draw a 3D map to allow the car to see potential dangers.

This is done by emitting a laser beam from smart cars, and bouncing its pulses a second time to determine distances accurately, identify the features of objects, surrounding objects and people, in addition to monitoring nearby parking lots.

While the sensors can map, they cannot accurately determine the speed of the surrounding cars in real time, so the turn of the radar is to send a signal to the processor to apply the brakes, or get off the road when needed to avoid accidents.

Cameras in self-driving cars provide overlapping images of the car's surroundings, not unlike the work of the human eye, which produces overlapping images before determining the surrounding depth of field, fringe motions, and object dimensions. Each camera provides a 50-degree viewing angle, with a resolution of about 30 metres.

While ultrasonic sensors, located in the wheels of the car, enable it to detect other vehicles in the parking lot.

The central computer analyzes all the available data from the sensors to control acceleration, stopping and all other operations.

Where does self-driving car technology stand now?

The world's largest companies are competing to develop self-driving car technology. General Motors recently began testing a prototype of its self-driving car, the Chevrolet Bolt, which it worked on with its owned company, Cruise Automation, which specializes in self-driving cars.

Uber is also preparing to launch a smart car for its customers in Pittsburgh, and these cars will not be completely driverless, but a backup driver will be available for emergencies, in preparation for their use without human intervention in the near future, and these cars will be free during the trial period, and they will not be forced. The company has no passenger to use those cars.

One of the most prominent companies in this field is Google, which introduces new developments to its smart cars day after day in order to be ready to walk the roads safely between passengers and pedestrians.

 The latest of those developments was the recent testing of a new artificial intelligence by Google's self-driving car development team, which makes the car know when and how it can sound the warning horn, in order to alert nearby cars or pedestrians.

 And Google's car was eventually able to sound the warning sound when needed, without making any noise on the road.

The company also has a patent for home delivery via a smart car, and it also intends to expand to compete with Uber and Lyft, and launch a delivery service through its smart cars.

Singapore recently launched the world's first self-driving taxi service, with a back-up driver.

The British government plans to launch a self-driving car on its roads within the next few years, with a view to being tested for safety before being sold to the public.

Concerns about self-driving cars:

Although many experts believe that smart cars are safer than their traditional counterparts, and that they will help reduce traffic accidents, the American businessman "Joshua Brown" was killed after his electric car equipped with a self-driving system collided with the trailer of a Tesla S truck. It sparked a great shock and widespread controversy in the United States of America about whether these cars are really safe or not.

A Google self-driving car first collided with a low-speed bus last February, and a second test car had another crash in California after being hit by another car, leaving damage to the rear of the car.