A hypothetical, self driving becomes ‘the thing’ or mandated by law, whatever.
Many modern cars need to be refitted, what is involved in this?
How many new systems would need to be added, how much can be done by the existing car’s computer system?
You’d need servos to activate the accelerator and the brake, and move the steering wheel back and forth. I think I saw them make those modifications in an episode of Mythbusters where they wanted to crash a car by remote control. But more importantly you’d need the optical scanners and pattern recognition software. I’m quite confident that your car’s existing computer system would not be capable of running a program that complex in anything close to real time. So, you’d need a different computer installed as well.
This might be easier on some cars than others. For example, many newer Toyotas already have drive-by-wire accelerator pedals. The pedal itself isn’t physically connected to the engine. It merely sends and electrical signal to the car’s Engine Control Unit telling the ECU the pedal position and the ECU controls the flow of fuel accordingly. A self-driving retrofit wouldn’t need to actually move the pedal at all, just bypass the electrical signal being sent from the pedal to the ECU.
I imagine that such a retrofit would be about as difficult as saying “I have a stick shift car and I want to make it into an automatic”-- technically possible but in most cases more expensive than just trading in the car and buying another one.
Depends, of course, on what the car already has. Assuming it has nothing:
- Brake booster replaced with an electro-mechanical unit that lets the computer apply the brakes.
- Steering column replaced with one that has electric assist with a computer interface so the computer can operate the steering.
- If the car has a manual transmission it would have to be replaced with an automatic.
- Looking at the sensors Tesla uses, A windshield camera and multiple sonar sensors in the front and rear bumpers.
- Drive-by-wire accelerator (could use existing cruise control, if equipped).
Probably cheaper to junk the car and buy a new one.
Things that you’ll generally find on “modern cars”:
- Drive by wire (this is now ubiquitous, it was common 10 years ago and I’d be surprised if any car sold in the last 5 years didn’t have it. It’s a huge cost saving and drivers don’t even notice the change)
- Electric power steering (fuel economy standards have mandated this, as there’s no heavy pump to drive, but it’s been tricky to get right. I’d say 5-7 years ago it was on high end cars, any new models that have hit the market in the last 2-3 years probably have it)
- Computer controlled automatic (because nobody drives manuals anymore, sadly)
- Computer controlled anti-lock brakes (stability control systems are mandated by law, so some form of ECU control of brakes has pretty much been necessary since around 2007)
I think that’s one thing that the automakers find so appealing about self driving cars – all of the components are there, installed for different reasons but they suddenly find themselves with a car that’s got everything it needs to drive itself. When Lexus rolled out cars that could parallel park themselves, it was brilliant because all it cost them was some software and a button on the dash. Or maybe not even that, if there’s a touch screen in the car you don’t even need the cost of a button, it’s just all software.
As others have mentioned, the expensive part is the laser range finders and cameras. Cars with collision avoidance systems might already have some of the range finders, but those still exist only on high end cars, and often as options even then.
More than just the actuators, you need feeback. You need throttle, braking, and steering position telemetry, because the automation has to be aware of current state of these things to control how to actuate them. (In other words, the automation must be closed-loop.)
If it’s a reasonably modern car, I think this information is available in CAN bus messaging, or at least to the existing engine control automation. But an older car with very little computer intervention? You’d have to add it, which would make it even less cost-effective.
If you have lane keeping assist, auto park, collision detection/avoidance, and adaptive cruise control you’re 80% of the way there. The last 20% is going to be the hard part, the software and additional control systems to make it truly autonomous.
Yes, this seems right. There’s nothing there that can’t theoretically be solved by throwing more mad l33t engineering skillz at it along with thousands of dollars in parts, materials, and tools. In reality, there’s still a fair amount of demand for manual transmission cars - just find someone to buy yours, then go buy a comparable used car with an automatic transmission. Yes, you’ll probably take a loss of a few hundred or even a thousand or two for the “convenience” of being able to do this, but manual->automatic conversions are going to be more expensive anyway unless you want to do all the work yourself, and even then it’s questionable.
This is one of the reasons why cost is a major part of engineering work - you can’t just upgrade everything to triple-strength Space Shuttle-grade titanium alloy and make everything out of that. I guess you could, but the only customers you would have would be the super-rich. Have fun.
I’d imagine that in large part, the government will just mandate that all cars sold in the 2XXX model year have to be autonomous.
However I suspect that by that point, cars will be much more… assistive(?) than they are today- stuff like the automated proximity braking and lane-change sensors, and the like will be common, so it won’t be nearly like throwing automated cars into our current traffic en masse.
There may be a market for some sort of auto-driver contraption for owners of classic and vintage cars who want to drive them on the roads, if manual driving is entirely forbidden. Such a device would essentially have to be a robotic driver, in the sense of moving the steering wheel, manipulating the brakes, clutch and accelerator, and manipulating the gear shift lever. I’d imagine that they’d be networked into the autonomous car network and would be programmed with specific handling and performance information for the car that they’re driving- stuff like stopping times, acceleration times, etc… so that it could be broadcast to surrounding cars so they could make their decisions accordingly.
I imagine that something like this could easily be something that would only be affordable to the Jay Lenos of the world, not any old guy whose dad bequeathed him the 68 Camaro in the will.