automated vehicles

 These are vehicles that can drive themselves. A considerable amount of research and financial research is focused on the development of vehicle automation technology that can replace the driver. While this is a difficult task, significant progress has been made of the past few years. A vehicle automation system will feature sensors that can detect the operating environment of the vehicle including infrastructure and other vehicles. 

It also incorporates processing capability to enable the sense data to be turned into decision support. This in turn is fed into the vehicle control system which uses automated breaking, acceleration, and steering, to guide the vehicle according to the sensed data. Sensors will also detect the presence of pedestrians and other obstacles. In a similar manner to the connected vehicles described above, automated vehicles will generate significant data. This is likely to be larger than connected vehicle data due to the presence of more sophisticated sensors on automated vehicles including lidar and cameras. It is likely that automated vehicles will also require two-way interaction with infrastructure to enable a complete picture for vehicle operation and automation decision-making. Automated vehicles will initially supplement the role of the driver and will ultimately replace the driver. 

This will have significant impact on transportation as it sets the scene for on-demand automated vehicles, and more equitable access to transportation for the young, the old and those not able to use existing transportation services. Vehicle automation could have a considerable cost reduction impact on freight and transit, where the driver is present purely for vehicle operating purposes and not to get to a particular destination. It is estimated that driver compensation contributes about $0.48 per mile to the cost of operating a truck. Automated vehicles will also have a significant impact on short distance logistics within urban areas such as fast food delivery and package delivery.