Autonomous Vehicles: State of the Art, Future Trends, and Challenges

Abstract

Autonomous vehicles are considered to be the next big thing. Several companies are racing to put self-driving vehicles on the road by 2020. Regulations and standards are not ready for such a change. New technologies, such as the intensive use of machine learning, are bringing new solutions but also opening new challenges. This chapter reports the state of the art, future trends, and challenges of autonomous vehicles, with a special focus on software. One of the major challenges we further elaborate on is using machine learning techniques in order to deal with uncertainties that characterize the environments in which autonomous vehicles will need to operate while guaranteeing safety properties.