## Dreaming about our future

Sometimes I warmly reminded one of my memories in my childhood, a teacher who I loved showed students strange drawings, asking us to imagine the future we will fase. Once she led us, I was spiraled into that drawings and expanding my dreaming world. In my dream and the drawings she showed, I found out some people who were watching a TV show with holography, and a sensational nuclear fusion power plant transporting electricity to the city. In a house, a man who seemed like a student was taking a lecture in front of a computer monitor. Aside from them, there are tons of surprising technologies that may become real perhaps. Among all the astonishing stuff, an autonomous car, which is also called 'a self-driving car', was the most interesting thing that I wish to have.

## What is SDC?

What is the Self-Driving Car(SDC)? It literally means the car is able to arrive at the destination without a human driver. Recently, AI(Artificial Intelligence) plays a role of a driver through receiving information from sensors, processing and judging them, and command motors inside of a vehicle to control each component related to safe driving. In accordance with the definition of automation levels from SAE, A self-driving car is divided into 5 levels of automation based on how much it handles itself. Level 0 is a normal car not operated by any robot or AI. From level 1, we put cars into the category of autonomous cars.

Level 1 has functionalities that help small steering or acceleration tasks. In level 2, cars can perform cruise control or autopilot on some Tesla models, but drivers need to stay on the seat and keep focusing during the operation. Level 3 automation allows drivers to integrate "safety-critical functions" into the vehicles but car-makers prefer to pass this level because drivers might be jumping over the major tasks of driving or cars might be doing so. Level 4 vehicles reach the destination themself without human controls at almost all time but they still need feedbacks from the human in severe environments, such as raining, snowing, untrained area to AI. Level 5 is a fully self-driving car.


## Recent and Upcoming technologies

From our expectations, how much did we make these real? When I came up with this question, I skimmed up a couple of news through google, then cannot believe that the UK established a new regulation for self-driving cars to be allowed on roads from the end of 2021. Furthermore, Waymo's robotaxi were launched and they hit the record of 100,000 trips in 2020, the rate of use is constantly raising up. So much impressive, isn't it?

So from now on, let's explore where this incredible technology is and where it would go, researching the global car sellers!!

### Waymo (Google)

Waymo is a subsidiary company of Alphabet Inc, which is the parent company of Google. They developed their own technology to build lidar sensors, which makes Waymo becoming a pioneer in the self-driving car field. On top of that, they also have tremendous experiences and plentiful funding from Google projects started 11 years ago. They also introduced a fully driverless ride-hailing service in Phoenix in late 2020. And to expand the service, Waymo applied for permitting autonomous vehicles to be used for rides and delivery in San Francisco.

### GM

In 2016, General Motors funded almost $600 million for developing Cruise Automation and constantly intended to focus self-driving car efforts for a ride-hailing service, spending a similar amount of funding for each year. In 2018, GM paid $500 million to buy Lyft to obtain the integrated network technology for the on-demand autonomous cars. It enabled GM's cars to only need to be programmed for operations, even though this limits geographic area for driving. GM is now testing Cruise across California, Arizona, and Michigan. They plan to deploy full-self-driving cars in San Francisco soon so that a lot of tests are in progress.

### Toyota

Toyota was one of the most skeptical companies for the development of an autonomous car. But they invested 1 billion USD over 5 years to develop robotics and AI technology in 2015. Toyota hoped to launch products in accordance with its Highway Teammate programs in 2020.

In late Feb 2021, President Akio Toyoda announced a fleet of more than 30 million self-driving cars will be driving on roads globally. For achieving this blueprint, they bought Lyft's division for $500 million and is also building its sensor-laden "Woven City" from the ground up a two-hour drive outside of Tokyo. As soon as the construction finish, it will offer a model of urban centers in the new era of autonomous transportation.


Toyota’s Woven City will be located at the foot of Mount Fuji. Source: Toyota Motor Corp.

### Hyundai

Hyundai's main focus for a self-driving car is affordability, its developing operation system cut the cost with a lot less computing power. In this regard, Hyundai, starting from 2016, was targeting self-driving in highway and urban driving in 2030. Thus Hyundai spent 1.7 billion USD on this project.

### Volvo

Volvo betted that self-driving cars will change both the ride-sharing and the luxury car market. In 2016, Volvo embarked on a $300 million joint project with Uber to launch next-generation autonomous cars. The company provides the physical vehicles for Uber's self-driving test.

Volvo and Uber planned to have a car that can drive fully autonomously on the highway by 2021. Meanwhile, Volvo is also trying to avoid some of the consumer's concerns and legal problems that could inhibit the development of self-driving cars. On 21 May 2021, they introduced the safest self-driving car by using sound and gaming technology.

### Tesla

Teslas was widely known for its technology utilizing cameras and radar, unlike other company's technology with Lidar. And Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, is continuously bolding their trajectory of the self-driving car, even though his promise in 2017 that autonomous car would drive from Los Angeles to New York, didn't come true, and even in 2019, 2020.

And Tesla's full self-driving taxis are under review in California. It makes us expect that 1,000,000 Robotaxis can be found in the upcoming future.