Autonomous driving with only camera and GPS?

Wayve, an AI technology company based in Cambridge, UK, has built an autonomous driving system that can drive even the first narrow road through only a camera and basic GPS navigation. The self-driving vehicle currently being developed uses all kinds of sensors such as riders, cameras, and ultrasonic waves to accurately grasp the surrounding situation, while attempting safe driving by adding precise map data. However, Wave is trying to realize an autonomous vehicle capable of unmanned driving with only easier and cost-effective equipment.

The prototype of the autonomous vehicle developed by Wave is based on the Renault two-seater micro electric car, the Twizzy. I just trained AI for 20 hours. However, the AI learning method is significantly different from the existing autonomous vehicles. Through computer vision, the traffic conditions around them were created so that they could learn how to make cars run like humans do.

Therefore, the prototype runs on the left side of the road and slows down at an intersection without learning from humans. Since only the most important functions for vehicle control are taught using data, the computer workload can be greatly reduced while driving.

Wave’s AI gives the concept of uncertainty to the entire model by focusing on the operation of the accelerator, brake, and steering wheel that controls the vehicle in the front and rear direction and in the transverse direction. In this way, it teaches the most basic input information to control, streamlines computer operation processing, and enables processing with a notebook PC-level processor. If the vehicle can be moved efficiently, the sensor can secure a large amount of information, and the computation cost and power consumption can be significantly lowered to less than 10% than before.

The human driver also always checks the rear lights, keeping the driving speed at about 60km/h and controlling the brakes and steering wheels in mind. Wave AI can be said to be performing more human-like processing. However, it will take time to apply this technique to everyday life. If you look at the video of the demo driving, it is only a scene of driving at a low speed over a relatively less crowded street. Of course, there are some complicated situations, such as the appearance of oncoming vehicles, but there is no signal recognition, parking or high-speed driving. In addition, there may be fears that an AI that remembers driving like a human may cause accidents inadvertently like humans. However, the wave technology is meaningful in that it showed the possibility of AI autonomous driving at low cost without the burdensome equipment of the autonomous vehicle we have seen so far. Related information can be found here .