How Renault’s Self-Driving Car Can Avoid Obstacles So Good?

You will be amazed at how a self-driving vehicle can avoid obstacles and may think it is driven by a pro driver. Of course, the design of this autonomous system was derived from professional drivers themselves.

It was made official by the Renault Group that its autonomous car control system is able to avoid obstacles. This only proves that humans are amazing drivers, as what the director of Renault Open Innovation Lab Simon Hougard said in a popular post.

The collaboration between the Renault and Chris Gerdes, director of Stanford University Dynamic Design Lab, would help in the development of the “mind off” technology to the public. A demo was able to take note of the speed of the system in which accuracy can be maintained. That was around 30mph, which was tested in the autonomous prototype called Callie.

This will be a necessary feature in any autonomous system to avoid objects. However, there were companies working on the same concept, discovering some surprising results in the process. In fact, Volvo has found out that their self-driving cars can get tripped up by kangaroos.

Based on the demo, the car in autonomous mode was able to avoid obstacles and the cones at the speed of 27mph. One driver even tried it at 23mph, but it ended up hitting a cone. Most professional drivers in developed countries can drive with less than 1 fatality per 100 million miles. So, beating and meeting such a benchmark would ensure safety and make their dreams of having autonomous cars a reality.

In Australia, Volvo designers have discovered that kangaroos have affected the driving accuracy, being both a nuisance and confusing to its vehicles. Kangaroos were among the major causes of vehicular collisions. But, getting detection system of self-driving cars to spot these obstacles has become part of the development process.

Renault admitted that it is still in the process of working on the system. Nevertheless, this system will be useful for the current 15 Renault cars and 40 Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance cars with autonomous technology. The company is hoping to have them in the market come 2022.