Artificial Intelligence in Self Driving Cars -- Part 1

Self driving cars which seemed like fiction in not so recent past, have become a hot topic in the auto and tech industry. New players like Google, Baidu, Tesla are jumping into this sector has heated up competition and as of current day, almost all car manufacturers have announced their development efforts towards autonomous driving. It is now broadly clear that vision sensing elements like cameras, LIDAR ( like Velodyne's LIDAR seen on top of Google's self driving cars), RADARs, SONARs, night vision systems, proximity sensors, etc. are the most important enabling elements for self driving technology. These sensors are mounted across the vehicle body to form real time 3D image of the surroundings. These images are then compared to already existing 3D maps and intelligent algorithms are able to take the appropriate action to drive the car without any manual intervention.