If you have ever wondered how are self driving cars regulated in the US, you are not alone. I dug into the federal statutes, state laws, agency rulebooks, and recent congressional bills to put together a clear picture. The short answer is that no single regulator controls autonomous vehicles in America. Instead, a patchwork of … Read more
Vehicle to everything communication (V2X) is a wireless technology that lets a vehicle share data with any entity that may affect, or be affected by, it — including other cars, roadside infrastructure, pedestrians, cellular networks, and the power grid. I think of V2X as the connective tissue of an intelligent transportation system: it gives cars … Read more
If you have driven a newer car, you have probably felt a gentle tug on the steering wheel as you drifted toward a lane line. That is Lane Keep Assist at work, one of the most common advanced driver assistance features on the road today. In this guide, I will break down what Lane Keep … Read more
If you have driven a modern car lately, you have probably noticed a small steering-wheel icon labeled ACC or a car-following symbol on the dashboard. That button controls adaptive cruise control, a driver-assistance system that automatically matches your speed to the vehicle in front of you. The core idea is simple: pick a speed, pick … Read more
If you’ve ever wondered how a self-driving car knows exactly which lane it’s in, where the curb sits, and when to turn, the answer is localization. Localization in autonomous vehicles is the technical process that gives a car an answer to one simple question: where am I, right now, within a few centimeters? I’ve spent … Read more
Path prediction in autonomous driving is the process by which a self-driving car forecasts the future trajectories of itself and surrounding road users using sensor data, AI, and machine learning models. In plain terms, it is the part of the autonomous stack that answers the question: where will that car, cyclist, or pedestrian be in … Read more
When I first read about the MIT Moral Machine experiment, I spent an hour clicking through impossible choices:swerve into a wall and kill the passenger, or stay the course and hit three pedestrians? Self-driving cars have to answer questions like that in milliseconds, and the answer is rarely simple. How do self-driving cars make ethical … Read more
A disengagement in autonomous vehicle testing is the moment when a self-driving car stops driving itself and either hands control to a human safety driver or falls back to a minimal-risk condition. It is the single most important safety event regulators, engineers, and the public use to judge whether an autonomous system is ready for … Read more
When I first watched a self-driving car crawl through a San Francisco downpour, I expected smooth sailing. Instead, the vehicle slowed, hesitated, and almost missed a green light. That moment captured the entire problem with autonomous vehicles in bad weather: every sensor the car relies on has a weakness, and bad weather finds them all. … Read more
An HD map in autonomous driving is a centimeter-precise digital map that gives a self-driving car a highly detailed reference of the road, including lane geometry, traffic signs, and barriers. Without this kind of high-definition map, a vehicle cannot reliably localize itself or plan a safe path at highway speeds. I have spent the last … Read more