Changing lanes is simple for human drivers. Not so for autonomous cars. Instead of gray matter and muscle memory, self-driving vehicles make decisions using programming, artificial intelligence, and onboard perception systems such as lasers, cameras, and radar.
We asked four companies—drive.ai, a startup out of Stanford; nuTonomy, born from MIT; Uber; and Waymo—what their cars consider when deciding whether to veer left.
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Signals dotted through the environment offer the car’s robot brain important clues. Using an AI strategy called deep learning, a drive.ai vehicle can figure out that a car stopped at a green light might be stalled, while one that doesn’t proceed during a red light is just going with the flow. Algorithms can also conclude that flashing hazard lights on a vehicle ahead mean that it probably isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.