Progress in Self-Driving Vehicles

Automated driving has experienced a research renaissance over the last decade. As a research community, we have been motivated by the opportunity to increase safety, increase mobility, and improve the experience of mobility. Some of the key advancements that have shaped the field over this time period have been the advancement and application of machine learning, advancements in large scale mapping, improved LIDAR and RADAR sensing capability, and more recently, a deeper understanding of the human factors that will influence the form by which this technology comes to market. Why Self-Driving Vehicles? In the United State, the leading cause of death for individuals aged 4-34 is traffic accidents (Hoyert, 2012). We kill over 30,000 people each year on our roads, and 90+ % of these accidents are due to human error. The importance of personal mobility in our society is such that when individuals lose the privilege of driving, and lose social connections it enables, their life expectancy drops precipitously (Edwards, 2009). The ability to move through cities is decreasing as more and more users, longing for individual automobile mobility, flood roadways. The rate of urbanization in developing cities is the latest incarnation of the tragedy of th