Introduction
Throughout history, the human race always sought ways to ease the burden of labor. At the beginning of time, the first humans developed primitive tools to relieve themselves from certain manual processes. Since then optimization of tools and processes has become the primary goal of the human race in relation to the development of production. Automation has become the ultimate intervention in that process. The current paper focuses on automated cars as an invention that has the possibility to change the world. In light of this, the following research questions have been formulated:
- How automated cars will change the car industry?
- What is the relationship between automated cars, the environment, and society?
The autonomous technology for cars is certainly a benefit, as in the future it will allow decreasing the incidence of car crashes and offer substantial benefits to the industry, environment, and society.
Main Concepts
Technology
Technology is the complex of methods, knowledge, practices, and tools used for achieving results in certain fields of human activity. It may be used for scientific purposes or the production of goods and services. The primary benefactor of technology is humans. In the earliest of days, the technology existed in the form of knowledge and practices of hunting, gathering, creating fire, or shelter. It seems to have been alongside humans for as long as they exist. The ability to develop and apply technological solutions for their benefit became the radical distinction between humans and the rest of the animals. Knowledge is an essential part of technology in a way that it is special know-how that allows to craft, modify, and tune the mechanisms and objects to suit human needs. Such know-how can also be called technological knowledge. According to Layton (Johnson, 2005), technology embodies three elements such as technological imagination or ideas, technique or the artifact, and design which is the practical implementation of the two. Such understanding of it allows distinguishing between technology seen as a practical and material object and knowledge – the abstract and prerequisite for the creation of the former. For the purposes of current research, the use and understanding of technology will be narrowed down to a specific one such as an automated car in the field of vehicle manufacturing.
The development of technology historically stood as the main attribute of the progress of the human race as a whole. Major inventions have enormously impacted the human’s understanding of things, changed its culture, worldview, society structure, and norms of behavior. However, those changes are rarely meant to revolutionize society, and the most common goal for technology development is obtaining profit, decreasing labor dependence, or both. The development of the round wheel, construction of boats, aqueducts, and planes is the demonstration of the main purpose of technology: decreasing the burden of labor for humans. In 1771, Richard Arkwright invented a water-powered mill that led to a significant increase in four productions for time units and decreased the amount of manual labor needed.
In 1913 ford introduced a conveyer belt that even further simplified and sped up the production of goods as his invention was utilized in many other spheres. One can remember many examples of such innovations that decreased the amount of human force that was needed for producing goods. Automation becomes the ultimate stage of labor simplification and acceleration. In 1938, with the introduction of the first industrial robot designed to carry out repetitive action, the world had changed once again. There formed a trend that led to increasing the number of robots performing various tasks in a multitude of spheres of life. Now robots and machines carry out thousands and thousands of tasks from producing and redacting poetry to brushing our teeth.
Environment
Under the current research, the environment will be defined as the area that surrounds the car within the radius of sensors of the automated cars and the conditions that may affect the effectiveness and safety of the automated vehicle. It will encompass the urban environment, which is usually characterized by dense pedestrian and vehicle movement with many turns, traffic lights, and other obstacles. In addition, the environment will embody road-free terrain and highways. The environment can also be used in its second meaning that imbues weather conditions and temporary obstacles such as construction and repair works that the automatic vehicle needs to consider. The environment may also include the level of driving culture development in the country, as it is also a significant factor that influences the safety of the technology.
Society
Society here is the main benefactor from and contributor to automated car technology. In the framework of this research, society is understood as a global mass of people with diverse needs that will generally benefit from the use of automated cars as a whole. Society plays a great role in the development of automated car technology. Firstly, it forms a demand for such inventions as it always tends to make human life easier through innovations. Secondly, society influences vehicle producers to finalize the technology before selling it on the mass market. Finally, it influences the government to provide the protection of their safety in regard to automated cars, which leads to the development of laws and regulations in the sphere.
Automation
Automation is the kind of technology that allows running a process without human interference. Most often, automation is related to specific mechanisms operated by human-crafted software that navigates the mechanism’s parts to perform certain tasks. Automation can have different degrees of ‘completeness’ different by the degree of involvement of human labor. Humanity has progressed down the path of automation gradually but not consistently in various spheres, reaching new and new levels of their non-involvement. The variety of application fields and technologies is immense. As such, automation tools may include computer-aided technologies such as computer-aided design or manufacture (CAD(M)). Industrial control has also become the sphere where automation proliferated. The emergence of programmable logic controllers allowed to relay the labor control, synchronization, and direction of data streams from input to output.
A variety of other automation tools exists. However, none of them is capable of fully relieving the human from any labor. Always, there is a certain amount of action that is required from operators or engineers to monitor and observe the stability of the automated system. The simplest and most common human interference with an automated system is switching it on and off. One of the reasons for the current impossibility of complete automation is the fact that a sustainable self-repairing holistic network of artificial intelligence-controlled mechanisms is yet to be designed.
There is also certain ambiguity between the terms ‘autonomous’ and ‘automated.’ According to Wood, Chang, Healy, and Wood (2012), autonomous is generally acknowledged by many and is more widespread across the U.S. However, from the linguistic standpoint, the term ‘autonomous’ has a connotation of complete absence of human intervention in a process (in relation to cars), while ‘automated’ implies a control exercised by a machine or made automatic. The present concepts and models of vehicles are better described with the automatic then autonomous, as yet no tested and officially certified vehicle reached full automation with no driver needed.
The car industry becomes one of the first and greatest benefactors of automation with many companies utilizing an almost completely automated cycle of car production. It also becomes a frontier in developing automation technology that decreased the effort needed to produce and use cars. As such, manual transmission was substituted with an automatic one. Parktronic, active parking assist technology, hydraulic amplifiers for steering and braking, and many more now serve the purpose of maximizing comfort while driving. Still, despite the fact that car control is simplified, a person is still required to steer the wheel, brake, accelerate, turn on direction lights, and perform other operations. Complete automation of driving a car had become a dream even before the first robots appeared.
The emergence of a large number of government-sponsored and private experiments on developing automation mechanisms required regulation and classification that was introduced by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) in 2014. This classification was adopted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The main principle of classification was the level of driver intrusion in the process of controlling the vehicle behavior. In accordance with SAE classification 5 levels of automation emerged:
- Drive assistance;
- Partial Automation;
- Conditional Automation;
- High automation;
- Full automation (SAE International, 2014).
Driver assistance is the lowest level of automation that includes the mechanic assistance of the system to the driver based on the analysis of the road situation. As an example of such a system, one may name cruise control. Partial automation includes leaving certain driving processes such as acceleration/deceleration or steering to the AI while the driver manually controls all the rest. Level three represents full automation in certain environments that are easily predictable and viable for analysis due to the limited amount of potential road situations. This level presupposes that the driver is still required to oversee the process and respond to intervention requests generated by the AI. High automation differs from the conditional one by the ability to manage adverse situations without calling for interference or the absence of response to one. The highest level of automation requires no driver present in the car.
Theoretical Approach
Actor-network theory (ANT) was chosen as an approach to studying technology and automation. ANT suggests that humanity is not the only contributor to shaping society, its needs, and relationships within it (Sayes, 2014). Objects, ideas, and processes, according to the theory, as just as important. Despite the fact that human is the creator of the above-mentioned notions, their existence by itself changes human, and society as a whole. In relation to technology, an invention of the wheel and the wheel itself as an object have revolutionized society in a variety of ways. Many other creative people besides the inventor adopted this object in their own projects such as a cart, carriage, bicycle, car, etc. Each of those inventions either increased the mobility of people or made their labor more efficient and effective. This allows saying that the wheel itself became the driver of change in society. The automated car can also be called an object that has an immense capacity to change society.
Instrumentalism aligns perfectly with the goals of this research. Instrumentalism is a philosophy that states that scientific concepts, theories, and hypotheses are instruments that help humans interact with the world and each other. In relation to technology, the latter can also be seen as a tool that helps society prosper and develop. Therefore, automated cars as a vivid manifestation of technology also become such an instrument.
From instrumentalist doctrine, a utopian outlook on automated cars is formed. By itself, technology cannot harm or benefit humans. It depends only on the ways they use and further develop it. It is in the human best interest to make it failsafe, and if they do, the benefits for individuals and society will be immense. A dystopian point of view, on the other hand, projects that there will be more harm than good from such innovation.
The Emergence and Development of Automated Car Technology
In the 1920s, human-made first attempt to approach automation with the development of radio control (Bimbraw, 2015). Houdina equipped a car with an antenna that received a radio signal from a transmitter held in close proximity. Electric motors installed in the car controlled by the signals from the transmitter enabled the car to accelerate, decelerate, and turn. Technically speaking, this was not complete automation, as the participation of humans in this process was evident and irreplaceable. The advancements in this field followed and brought guidance technology that allowed an electric radio-driven car to follow the pattern of road-embedded circuits. General Motors in collaboration with the Nebraska Department of Roads constructed a full-scale highway embedded with such devices. They were able to identify the presence and parameters of the vehicle above and its speed. The technology was able to navigate the car and do not allow it to escape the lane creating an emergency situation.
In Britain, the technology of the highway controllers was updated and used magnetic fields instead of radio-electric signals. At that time, experimental programs in the US has reached the scale of several states. General Motors created cars that we’re able to navigate on such roads called Firebird. In the 1980s, computers were first introduced as a solution for controlling the behavior of autonomous cars. A simple artificial intelligence (AI) controlled the process of steering, acceleration, turning, etc. through the use of robotic control. It was also the first attempt to use sensors as the method of obtaining information about the environment around the vehicle.
In the 1990s, under the United States initiative, car developers ventured into designing and implementing solutions for autonomous vehicle systems (Bimbraw, 2015). VaMP and VITA-2 were some of the first cars created by Mercedes that we’re able to navigate heavy traffic and unpopulated lanes while maintaining speed, stability, and lack of human intervention. However, safety in unplanned and unmodelled events was still an issue and drivers took over the control in unmapped road construction sites. In 1995, Carnegie Center invented the car that traveled almost 5,000 kilometers with little human intervention (Bimbraw, 2015). However, their creation was semi-automatic and did not pursue full automation. It allowed drivers to maintain the privilege of acceleration and deceleration while leaving steering and turning to the AI.
The government of the United States also became interested in developing automated cars for military use. As such, it presented several projects including Demo one, two, and three. Despite no human piloting being required, the limited capacity of performed actions diverged the US military from adopting the technology. The features of the Demos were navigation through terrain obstacles and moving as a group of vehicles. In November 2007, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) held a competition for vehicle producers to design a car that is able to travel a certain distance in an urban area without human interference (Bimbraw, 2015). Chevy Tahoe developed by Carnegie University successfully completed this challenge.
Currently, major car manufacturers such as Ford, Toyota, General Motors, Volkswagen, Audi, BMW, and other brands have their prototypes of cars with various degrees of driving process autonomy (Bimbraw, 2015). Mostly, automated cars are capable of driverless navigation in a limited number of cases such as vehicle-free lanes, slow and steady urban car flow. Technologically, new solutions such as stereo-cameras, and a combination of long-range and short-range radars. Due to the development of accelerated signal reception, processing, and response generation, the autonomous sensor-driven technology developed earlier became more advanced nowadays.
The most recent innovation is ultrasonic sensors and LIDAR technology. The latter represents a pulsating laser used to create a 3D model of the surface, and analyze it, and other data gathered from ultrasonic sensors, and cameras to create a plan of action for driving. In 2017, Audi claimed that its new A8 is capable of fully-automatic driving with SAE level 3, allowing the driver to completely leave control over the vehicle to the AI at speeds up to 60 km/h (Litman, 2017). Earlier, in 2016, Tesla announced that it developed an SAE level 5 automation technology that will be built in all its cars (Litman, 2017). However, to initiate it, the driver has to let the system learn and gather data on typical road situations and ways to avoid them. A rather substantial amount of driving in network learning mode as well as government certification will be required to unblock it. The highest, level five automation is now being tested in Singapore where the first fully autonomous taxis with no drivers were introduced.
The Relationship between Automated Cars, Society, and Environment
Automated cars even though they are not properly introduced to the mass market, are already known to society due to the effects of globalization and the associated speed of information flow. The perspective of relieving oneself from driving makes some people anticipate their official emergence, yet others seem to be more skeptical. The former public sees the benefit of automatization in the car industry due to the fact that it will eliminate the possibility of human error. For the whole period of development and testing of this technology, which is roughly about a hundred years, only one person died in a car accident involving automated cars (Carrie & Levin, 2018). It is undoubtful that even a single life is a great cost, yet the industry will allow us to make adjustments and make sure that such will never occur again.
An AI is capable of noticing much more details than an average human and plans its actions based on the current situation with more certainty than a human would. Human factors and human bad decision-making have been the major causes of road accidents which creates billons-worth of losses to society. Automated cars more easily recognize other automated vehicles which creates a positive correlation between the number of them and the safety on the road. According to recent studies, automated cars can decrease road accidence by 90% and save up to $190 billion in damage and health costs (Ramsey, 2015). That would be an enormous benefit to society. In addition, relieving people from the need to drive manually, autonomous cars will allow more free time that could be spent for work or leisure. An economic benefit from this is rather substantial, as the productive capability of humans and their capacity to buy goods and services will increase. Another positive social effect that automated cars could bring is the increased equality of opportunities and mobility of elderly or disabled people.
Since there would be no need to drive manually and no driving skills or physical aptitude will be required, greater mobility of these people will include them in the process of economic and social relations. In the nearest future when fully autonomous and failsafe cars will appear, the need for a steering wheel will subside, which will allow a new look on a car as personal space or even home. Mercedes Benz already presented such a spacy design that was implemented in their car of the future, F 015 (see fig.1).
Such cars can become small private bars, meeting places, temporary mobile mini-houses, and so much more. This will not only increase the mobility of those who were underprivileged in that regard. It will change the understanding of mobility and comfort and bring it to a whole new level.
People may be able to travel greater distances with no effort, and minimal spendings as the majority of the leading manufacturers such as Tesla, BMW, Mercedes Benz, and Nissan make their autopilot cars fully electric. In addition, autopilot cars could decrease road congestion. When the number of automated cars reaches or at least approaches 100% a vehicular connection will allow vehicle-to-vehicle communication. This will, in turn, create a smooth speed limit that all cars follow. According to Ackerman (2012), such a situation will produce a 273% increase in highway capacity.
On the other hand, society may also be negatively affected by this technology. Automotive industry and surrounding service producers such as drivers, or repair people will likely lose their job with almost no option for requalification, especially if they are of age. Privacy will likely become an issue as the cars transmit their location to many services. Not only knowledge of one’s location could become a target of criminals but the vehicle and its passengers. Like any electronic device, it could be interfered with and stolen. With the present onset of terrorism, automated cars can become another option for such people. With no driver and a load of explosives, it could do heavy damage to hundreds of people.
There is also an opinion that society will not benefit from cars even the automated ones since it is not a sustainable solution for modern cities. Most of the world’s cities were built before the time of total auto mobilization. Even thirty percent of the population in a major city such as New York creates a great deal of congestion, and with the popularity and availability of automated cars, the ownership will likely to rise. This will probably cause even more urban sprawl and greater distances between socially significant institutions which will make society spend more time on the road than doing what they like.
From the environmental standpoint, pedestrians and cyclists will likely feel safer as the recognition and action in automated cars happens faster and more effectively than that in human drivers who may not notice them in dark hours (Litman, 2017). Again, off-road safety enables owners of automated cars enables them to explore and travel even more. From a negative viewpoint, weather conditions, dirt roads that are a problem in certain countries could affect the car’s sensors and cameras, which will likely cause road accidents. The cities as it was already said, will not be the beneficiaries of the increased popularity of automated cars. Among electric cars, there are also conventional gasoline ones that will contribute to forming a carbon footprint as a result of the aforementioned urban sprawl and fuel consumption. Despite the fact that the trend for sustainable energy is already strong in some countries, total conversion of cars to electric fuel will be delayed for as long as the interested parties benefit from oil and gas production and consumption.
All things considered, the positive effect of automated cars seems to outweigh the negative in relation to society. It will proclaim the new age of social connectivity and mobility. The free time will also increase, and travel will be a lot more enjoyable. Despite certain possible issues of fraud, terrorism, and negative effects on the cities, overall, this technology could rather push society forward in terms of technology and automation in general. From an environmental perspective, technology does not inspire optimism. In addition to urban sprawl and pollution, weather conditions and dirt could decrease the safety of passengers. However, these issues may be addressed by further improvements in technology and transition to renewable energy.
The impact of Automated Cars on the Car Industry
As soon as the frontiers of the industry will pass the necessary tests and acquire the required certifications, other manufacturers will need to follow in their footsteps. The automated car is a dream technology that in the first days of its existence on the market will likely create a huge demand. Companies such as Mercedes Benz, BMW, Audi, Toyota, Tesla, and other huge automotive corporations will make full use of it as they have the resources for research, development, testing, and production of a new vehicle type. However, updating previous models adding a feature of autopilot will also be possible. It will allow smaller car manufacturers to enter this niche and have their share. The quality and price will as always continue to be dominant criteria that attract customers. As there are several automation levels, it can be assumed that cars equipped with a maximum level of automation will be more expensive than those that offer only conditional automation.
The idea of creating fully autonomous car-inspired corporations that previously did not have any experience in producing cars such as Nvidia, Samsung, Huawei, Uber, Apple, Intel, Google, others. The reason for this is the fact that most of the vehicle’s ‘brain’ is programmable and these companies except for, probably, Uber have a strong orientation to IT technology. In addition, they are rather successful which allows them to outsource most of the assembly and vehicle component manufacturing to other companies. Therefore, the competition in the automated car manufacturing segment has increased.
Another consequence of the technology emergence is the change in skills and job position requirements for workers in car factories. Cars nowadays have an increased tendency to be filled with a variety of electronic devices, which requires qualified personnel with IT skills and knowledge (Shanker et al., 2013). Previously, most of the assembly and manufacturing was made by mechanics and engineers who controlled industrial robots. Now, to produce a fully electric car with a complex system of sensors, cameras, and AI software will take much more than a skillset of a mechanic or an electrical engineer. The average level of education of a factory worker, therefore, increases, depriving the low-skilled labor force of even more jobs. In conjunction with decreasing need for drivers and repair people, mechanics, and lower level engineers will either adapt to the new realities or be impoverished by the emergence of automated cars.
A new legal side of production and maintenance of the vehicles will now come into play with the emergence of automated cars. It is not yet clear who will bear the costs if a fully automated vehicle is involved in a car crash with victims. The legislation in the U.S. and in other countries has not yet developed an answer, and no company yet received permission to sell cars with the fully operational autopilot (Beiker, 2012). The one installed in Tesla runs only in test mode and only gathers data before it is unblocked. The probable outcome will be that the circumstances of the crash will, as usual, be examined. If law enforcement proves that the cause of an accident is an autopilot, the company will pay the fine. To eliminate the possibility of such cases the companies will be required to obtain a license that guarantees that their vehicle’s safety (Beiker, 2012). However, the criteria for the safety and reliability of an AI and its sensors are not yet developed. This, from the one side, deters the companies from rushing the technology into mass manufacture to be the first on the market. On the other side, legislative underdevelopment is slowing down the progress.
All in all, there are still many vague spots in the future of the automotive industry, but some things can be said for certain. Automated cars will certainly change the industry by increasing competition with the entrance of IT giants and changing the skill profile of an average car industry worker. It yet remains an intrigue who will develop their autonomous car first and get the biggest piece of the pie. Overall, the influence of automated cars on the industry will likely be positive as it will increase competition between manufacturers, which is always good for the end customer.
Conclusion
To conclude, automated cars and autonomous cars are our nearest future. According to the current research, this future will be rather bright than dark. The analysis of the relationship between automated cars, society, and the environment revealed that positive sides outweigh negative ones. Environmental issues, however, will need to be addressed. Regarding the global car industry, the increased competition will likely bring the customers better prices and quality.
References
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