There are a few factors that will impact whether or not autonomous vehicles will become widespread in the future. For one, there is a serious adoption curve for many consumers who are not sold on this technology, whether that be because they don’t feel safe in a driverless vehicle or because they aren’t ready to give up the freedom and independence that comes with owning their and driving their own vehicle. Another hurdle to consider is related to the technology associated with self-driving cars, as many speculate there will be a need for vehicle-to-vehicle communications across auto makers to make sure these cars can share the road safely.

In terms of potential impacts to companies directly in the automotive industry such as taxi services, new car dealerships and repair shops there is going to be a period of adjustment and pressure to keep up with the latest technology.

Ultimately, industry players will evolve and react as they have in the past. From the aftermarket perspective, an increased number of autonomous vehicles could lead to an increased interest in car customisation with additions like advanced video technology to entertain passengers.

I think the adoption of autonomous vehicles will be gradual as we as a society adjust to the changes. While some are predicting we’ll see an influx of these vehicles in the next five to ten years, I believe a more realistic prediction is within the next 20 to 25 years.

Whilst there is a great deal of apprehension around the safety of driverless cars on our roads, the latest vehicular communications have been designed to enable continuous, reliable, high-speed, authenticable interactions between moving vehicles.

These are usually divided into four use cases: communications of vehicles to other vehicles (V2V), vehicles to the road-side infrastructure (V2I), vehicles to pedestrians (V2P), and vehicles to the cellular network (V2N Together, these use cases are known as vehicles to everything (V2X).

V2X technology is projected to significantly improve transportation safety. According to a report by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, ‘If V2X technologies alone are widely deployed, they have the potential to address 81% of light-vehicle crashes’.

The landscape of vehicular transportation and urban safety is undergoing a fundamental change due to automation. Advances in V2X have the potential to dramatically reduce automotive collisions by utilising the latest technology to improve situational awareness.

Travel behaviour is continuously changing. In some respects we are creatures of habit, settled into routines.

However, as people move through life their circumstances change and the need to reconsider their mobility behaviour arises.

As a result, there is an important underlying dynamic to behaviour which sets the stage for how use of autonomous vehicles might influence it. At one extreme, the use of autonomous vehicles in behavioural terms may achieve nothing more than substituting manual control of a vehicle for automated control, so the patterns of car use would be largely unaltered.

However, the other extreme is the prospect for significant change. If vehicles are fully automated and can prevent motion sickness then scope is expanded for travel time doubling up as activity time, even for things such as sleeping.

While humans are purported to have limits to how much time they are prepared to spend travelling, this could put an upwards pressure on journey distances with consequential effects on land use patterns. A crucial behavioural question is whether people will continue to own vehicles as opposed to paying to use them only when they need them and potentially sharing on demand services.

Driverless cars are an idea best suited to wealthy, developed countries, and soonest achieved in data-rich, urban and suburban technology ‘mesh’ areas. These landscape solutions will take decades to fully roll out globally. When all cars are driverless, they can be guided like a robot army.

But at some point, a 60-40 mix of human and driverless cars will be on the same freeway and local roads. How’s that going to work out? During a rush hour snow storm?

That problem is vastly simpler if the human-driven cars have smartphones which can ‘talk’ to driver-less cars and mesh with urban traffic systems. Right now, the motor industry sees the smartphone mostly as an extension of their in-car displays. But smartphones can, and will, do much more.

Driver augmentation via smartphones will improve road safety far faster than robot cars. Smartphone AI also provides the optimum bridge to integrate today‘s technologies with tomorrow‘s solutions.

We need a seamless bridge from existing to future systems. Asking individual insurance companies to play that role is a big ask.

They are insurers, not technologists. The socially desirable outcome is beyond the capacity of a single insurer and its shareholder mandate. Government has a public interest here to bring about a well-regulated technology infrastructure which allows road safety authorities, technologists and insurers to manage risk optimally.

As is typical within the automotive industry, particularly given the very large installed base of vehicles, aftermarket solutions will play a very significant role in the lead-up to ubiquitous solutions. Autonomous vehicles and cars connected with aftermarket safety technology have the potential to create safer road conditions by reducing the amount of accidents caused by human error.

Designed to avoid risks like mobile phone distractions, illegal manoeuvring and spontaneous decision-making along with crash detection technology, these solutions can reduce accident rates and expedite emergency response. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, automated vehicles have potential to save lives and reduce injuries simply because 94% of serious crashes are due to human error.

These systems can log and share driver data with insurance companies, helping manage claims, estimate insurance premiums and lower costs. Autonomous vehicles can create savings for construction, trucking and logistics industries as well, by providing information on vehicle downtime, cargo status and predictive maintenance giving fleet managers transparency into their operations like never before.

In addition to cost savings and efficiencies, self-driving and connected vehicles can help save lives with advanced crash avoidance and response technologies.

It seems to me that there are two kinds of things autonomous vehicles (AVs) need: what you might call ‘static’ and ‘dynamic’ information. Static information is things that don't change, like exact location of the road, so the car knows how to stay on it. Dynamic is something like the fact that a deer just ran out in front of you, or a pedestrian, or a little kid chasing a ball.

The static information is really just a matter of doing it. If we want to know where every road in a city is, we can just drive on every road. It's the dynamic stuff that's hard. People are making lots of progress here, but they're making compromises as well and it's not clear how truly robust the resulting systems will be.  Probably they'll gradually get more reliable as time passes. But I don't think that infrastructure changes will really help.

I expect that the vehicles will start out very expensive, this requiring sharing for economic reasons, and gradually get cheaper. When I went to college, the whole college shared one computer. Now, each of us owns many computers because they've gotten so cheap. A smartphone, a laptop, a desktop, the computers that run our microwaves and our cars. So initially, I would expect AVs to be shared, sort of like autonomous taxis.  But it's incredibly convenient to own a car; my car, for example, contains a bowl for water for the dogs, some leashes, bags to put our shopping in, like that. The hardware costs of AVs are reasonably small; it's the software that's expensive. And the cost of reproducing that software is basically zero. So eventually, I would expect an AV to cost not a whole lot more than a regular car costs today.

Referring specifically to personal vehicles, ridesharing options, public transportation and the shipping and logistics industry, roadway infrastructure in the United States will see a major overhaul in technology and development strategies. Conceptually, it’s easy to contemplate a world of connectedness where our cars talk to our phones, which talk to our homes, which feed information back to utility companies to optimise their own networks, and municipalities create convenience for their citizens in the form of traffic control, emergency services, public works and public transportation. 

The first step for any municipality to consider when contemplating how they can support the evolving technologies like autonomous vehicles is for them to examine their own existing infrastructure. Light poles, parks, city-owned land, city-owned buildings, public works assets and similar assets serve a solid baseline for municipalities in preparation for technologies of the future. By taking a hard look at what they already own, municipalities can prepare use cases whereby they capitalise on widespread deployment of fibre and wireless nodes. In leveraging these assets, they can work with telecommunications companies and equipment manufacturers through Private and Public Partnerships to realise the benefits of connectivity sooner than later.

Other areas’ municipalities should be prepared to look at are crosswalks and intersections. Given some of the autonomously driving vehicle incidents with Tesla and Uber, concerns around pedestrians sharing the road have escalated. Some mid-term solutions will involve broader deployment of public safety initiatives. While technology serves a key role in some of these initiatives, other plans examine more basic infrastructure changes. For example, Las Vegas utilises a series of elevated crosswalks across much of the city to prevent pedestrians from crossing busy intersections. This has proven effective by preventing the possibility of pedestrian/vehicle incidents. Similarly, cement barrier and bollard solutions have been deployed in NYC to try and eliminate incidents.

Greater collaboration between the telecoms, auto manufacturers, logistics companies, Departments of Transportation through P3 (private/public partnerships) initiatives will yield synergies in development and meaningful capital contribution. Use of assets for the placement of fibre and antennae can serve as a baseline for revenue generation through ‘right of use’ agreements.

Autonomous vehicles will not completely replace human drivers in the foreseeable future. However, they are likely to have a large impact in specific areas, such as urban ridesharing and long-haul freight transportation. An analogy is that ridesharing companies such as Uber have had a huge impact on many people’s lives, even though they have come nowhere near completely replacing car ownership. We will see a similar scenario with self-driving cars. Many people will see their lives transformed, but human drivers will still remain on the roads for a long time.

Everybody is moving very fast in this industry. Automotive and technology companies realise how transformative self-driving cars will be, and they are racing to capture that market. Some companies are working toward a driverless vehicle that will be owned by consumers. This means that the vehicle needs to be able to go anywhere, just like any car on the market today can go anywhere. Probably there will be some places, maybe highways, where the vehicle will be able to drive itself, and other places, maybe rural roads, where a human needs to drive.

This hand-off between human and computer drivers is controversial, and many companies do not believe it can be done safely. Most of those companies are jumping straight to driverless vehicles, without a steering wheel, that will operate as part of ridesharing fleets in specific geographic areas.

In level 3 autonomy where there is transfer of control between car and human, driver monitoring technology can play a vital role by accurately assessing the driver’s state to determine the right time for the handoff of control from car back to human.

Cabin occupancy detection can further detect the passengers present, allowing the vehicle to adjust safety mechanisms in real-time, such as airbag deployment, according to the occupants’ body posture and mass. 

In higher levels of autonomy, and in particular level 5, the in-cabin passenger experience will be of great focus and cabin sensing technologies are a key to enhancing interactions.

Cabin monitoring systems can not only detect the passengers present, but can also identify each passenger to present personalised content on infotainment, trigger settings, or launch specific passenger profiles.

To augment this experience, vision-based gesture control allows seamless navigation of infotainment content with simple movements of the finger and hand. Therefore, in-cabin vision systems not only serve as the key to increasing safety, but also will play a key role in shaping the in-cabin experience as we head to full vehicle autonomy.