Home
Others
Others Features
Six Questions for Carnegie Mellon Autonomous Car Professor Raj Rajkumar

Six Questions for Carnegie Mellon Autonomous Car Professor Raj Rajkumar

By Associated Press | Updated: 10 July 2015 12:40 IST

Back in 1984, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University developed a self-driving car called the "Terregator" that used video cameras, sonar and laser to travel a few centimeters per second.

Today, the Pittsburgh school is among the world's leaders in autonomous cars. Google's self-driving car chief got his training there. It's doing research for General Motors, and ride-sharing service Uber recently signed on to develop a self-driving vehicle.

Raj Rajkumar has helped lead the school's efforts for the past 15 years as a professor of computer and electrical engineering. He also heads a spinoff company that is developing autonomous car software.

Here are Rajkumar's answers to questions about the fast-moving technology, edited for length and clarity:

Q: How long will it be until autonomous cars are in the public's hands?
A: I think full automation will happen sometime in the mid- to late-2020s, but from now until then, the vehicle will be able to drive itself on the highway, drive itself in a traffic jam, drive in limited urban situations where traffic lights are instrumented (to communicate with cars), and the vehicle will be able to park itself.

Q: Google says they will have a fully automated car ready in five years. Is that possible?
A: In terms of prototypes and demonstrations, yes I believe that is feasible. Technologically we've been able to do a lot of autonomous driving. We have driven autonomously in Pittsburgh, in Silicon Valley, in Nevada, in Washington, D.C. Taking the driver out of the equation I think is very different.

Q: What are the hurdles?
A: There are technological challenges that will take some time. But I think they are solvable. Then there are legal considerations, liabilities. It also depends on the country. The US tends to be a highly litigious society. But there are other countries that are a little bit more lax, so they may end up adopting it. I think of city-states like Singapore for example. The US is a very large country where climate varies quite a bit. I think it will be under more limited conditions with California, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada leading the way.

Q: What about snow obstructing cameras that read lane lines?
A: Weather conditions will plague us for a quite some time. Heavy rain, heavy snow, heavy fog. Lighting conditions. Road conditions where the lane markers are not there or have been covered. We as humans use a lot of societal cues. If somebody has driven down the road and you see tire marks, you know that is drivable. That kind of intelligence takes a longer time.

Q: Once a person isn't driving, doesn't liability become a big obstacle?
A: That's exactly what people in the car industry worry about. Look at cruise control. The early days, it had a whole bunch of problems. So it takes years even for a simple technology to demonstrate that it's reliable and affordable. When things go wrong they can come back and haunt you several years down the road.

Q: You're still working with Uber even though it hired away 40 researchers from your robotics center. Why?
A: Losing 40 people is a big deal. But we are able to attract new talent because that's what universities do. The fact that Uber started its advanced technology center here I think is basically a validation of the fact that Pittsburgh can be the hub for robotics and automation.

Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.