Artificial intelligence is increasing day by day over the last few years as today. You find devices equipped with AI wherever you see, in your pocket, in motor vehicles, and in your homes. Though self-driving cars have not been able to attract people so far, you can still expect the increasing use of fully autonomous vehicles shortly.
Though autonomous vehicles’ success is still suspicious due to increasing reports of their mishaps still to improve their safety, especially in construction zones, technical experts are working on it at a mass scale.
Safely Navigate Construction Zones
It can be frustrating even for human drivers to drive safely in construction zones. In this situation, it can be hazardous and confusing to control autonomous vehicles on construction sites. Though powerful algorithms are used in autonomous vehicles, they may still not be wise enough to predict a construction project’s impediments.
Thus, as per reports received human drivers, control the wheel of autonomous vehicles even while testing them on construction sites as they are very inconsistent with these sites. Autonomous cars may not follow directions like humans, even if a technology is correctly used to distinguish physical obstacles.
The workers working on construction sites usually depend on non-verbal or hand signals from the motorists to notice their driving condition. Even the use of a traffic cone, roadblocks, and other equipment has hopelessly failed to manage construction sites’ traffic.
In such conditions, some of the technologies that can be used in construction zones to help autonomous cars to perform through them safely. These technologies can be:
Use of wireless beacons on workers at construction sites
Instead of relying only on hand signals, wireless beacons can be used on a construction site to reduce the risk of autonomous cars going around the work sites. The computer systems of autonomous cars will communicate directly with the wireless beacons to make favorable decisions while reacting to the surrounding environment.
Update infrastructure to converse with autonomous cars
Small changes in the infrastructure can also be a way to allow autonomous cars to navigate through construction zones safely.
Connecting the wireless beacons on the construction workers to the emergency and traffic signals on roads in construction sites can be a viable technological solution for their safety in worksites as autonomous vehicles rely on their cameras to understand the surrounding world.
It has been revealed through various studies that the cameras of autonomous vehicles can be useless throughout the day, depending upon various things, including the sun’s position.
In this situation, the makers of policies on the construction sites can use the wireless beacons and modern marking tools used while constructing roads in construction zones to convey the position of road markers existing around the zone. The computer systems of autonomous cars will receive the data and navigate the zone safely by adding wireless beacons to them.
Alert humans of autonomous cars by using physical signs
The interaction of autonomous cars with the construction zones will be improved to make them more unsurprising by making some infrastructure changes. The makers of autonomous cars can use distinctive markings on their body to alert the workers of their existence.
They have to react to the dynamic conditions of driving on the roads within the construction zones.
It will be like the signs placed on the cars used for training new drivers. These signs are placed on the exterior of training cars to alert other drivers and encourage them to be careful and pay attention to the nearby areas and make quick actions.
Such visual caution signs can be used on autonomous cars to alert the humans working in the areas around them to react instantly according to the situation.
Thus, a few technological and infrastructural changes on the construction sites can moderately increase workers’ safety on these sites from the autonomous cars running on the internal roads. The wireless beacons used on construction workers will interact with the autonomous cars to ensure each other’s safety even if they do not care about traditional road markings and traffic cones etc.
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