Autonomous Vehicle

An autonomous vehicle is any vehicle that is capable of analysing its environment, planning a course and undertaking that course with anticipation of the paths of and respect towards other vehicles or beings encountered en-route, all without input from sources other than its own sensors. In other words, totally without human advisement or control.

As might be expected, a true autonomous vehicle is a very difficult thing to create and requires a high level of artificial intelligence with an ability to in essence, think for itself, rather than be programmed with a set of eventualities.

Examples do exist, in the form of cars, planes, and ships with rudimentary capabilities. In recent years some examples have advanced sufficiently to be considered safe road users on public roads.

See Also: Artificial Intelligence, Neural Network, Fuzzy Logic, Mobot, Embodiment, SLAM

Below, we offer a selection of links from our resource databases which may match this term.

Autonomous Vehicle Mobot UAV

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

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Machina Speculatrix: The very first Autonomous Robots
For all those claiming that autonomous robotics willnot be here for decades. In the 1950s, William Grey Walter built the very first, truly autonomous robots.

VR Interfaces: Kobayashi Youhei's 'Media Vehicle'

The Media Vehicle, is a serious take on VR interfacing, however it is not a serious commercial device. The unit is, for lack of a better phrase, an ?art tool?. It exists to showcase what is currently possible in 2009, not as a device which expects a practical market.

Augmented Reality Sensor Web for the Road: Real-Time Ice Location
The VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has created what is essentially, a scalable, modular road ice sensor network, designed to work with all types of heavy goods vehicle, and to communicate with any other technology also in place on the vehicle's data bus - drawing GPS data from other devices and interfacing with satelite navigation systems and in-cabin displays to warn the driver of approaching ice.

Autonomous Shrapnel Remover
We are still a long way from an autonomous robot surgeon in general surgery, but perhaps not as far removed as it was believed. Bioengineers at Duke University have developed a laboratory robot that can successfully locate tiny pieces of metal within flesh and guide a needle to its exact location, without any human assistance.

Indoor Totally-Autonomous UAV Plane
Researchers working at MIT have cracked one of the most difficult challenges in autonomous aircraft sensing and AI to crop up since self-piloting aircraft first came about. They have devised a method whereby fast-flying UAV planes can detect their environment and react swiftly enough to be able to fly indoors, dodging both static and moving obstacles as effortlessly as any human pilot could.

Bio-inspired Flying Robots: Experimental Synthesis of Autonomous Indoor Flyers

This book demonstrates how bio-inspiration can lead to fully autonomous flying robots without relying on external aids. Most existing aerial robots fly in open skies, far from obstacles, and rely on external beacons ? mainly GPS ? to localise and navigate. However, these robots are not able to fly at low altitude or in confined environments, and yet this poses absolutely no difficulty to insects. Indeed, flying insects display efficient flight control capabilities in complex environments despite their limited weight and relatively tiny brain size.

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