Tesla’s Autopilot An Autonomous Wannabe Says Volvo

Tesla’s Autopilot an “autonomous wannabe” as it's not fully dependent on its own according to Volvo

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Volvo seems to have been unimpressed by the Tesla Autopilot semi autonomous driving technology when everyone else took an admiring stand and applauded it. It is evident with the interview Trent Victor, senior technical leader of crash avoidance at Volvo, gave to The Verge as he described the technology as “unsupervised wannabe”. In simple terms, the American car maker, who was in the momentous spotlight for unveiling the Model 3 full-electric car last month, is trying to develop a semi-autonomous vehicle that is suspected to be autonomous.

Over at Tesla, the Autopilot function is classified as a second level autonomous technology – advanced from anything its production cars have so far. As per the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Level 2 comprises of automation of at last two primary control functions that work in tandem to leave the driver independent of control of those function – shortly, adaptive cruise control with lane keep assist.

In contrary to that, as demoed in a number of circumstances, the system can navigate itself away from any harm without the intervention of the driver – a significant character of a Level 3 technology. In which, the driver can give the control of all the safety critical functions to the vehicle itself. The problem is, driver should be wary of any potential hazards at any moment’s time as the technology can’t be fully dependent.

That particular trait is any case be deemed very unsafe, said Victor. From his point-of-view, the autonomous in-car driving technology should allow the driver independent to be his/her own such as watching video, reading or sending email, listening to music and so on. The technology should take over everything a human driver should do concedes Victor and shouldn’t be supervised.

Volvo is world-renowned for introducing many of the advanced safety technologies currently available in the market and the Swedish company’s Drive Me autonomous car which will be broken cover in Gothenburg in 2017. It is a highly-advanced Level 4 autonomous car which means it doesn’t have to rely on human assistance and can do the driving in a fully-automatic way.

This is in complete contrast to the Tesla’s feature as the Autopilot suddenly turns off when the vehicle gets in precarious situation, prompting huge danger at times. The design philosophy of both the companies are entirely different as Volvo wants to be fully responsible for anything happen on-road while Tesla sticks by its guns and says humans sometimes need to make the wise decision.

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SOURCEThe Verge