Steam Engines: A Case Study

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The next big revolution of technological progress is robotisation – and it already started. Like the invention of steam engines or electricity, automation will have a huge impact both on economy and on society. The first sector that is going to be radically revamped is trans-portation and the flagship of this development are autonomous cars. Their breakthrough will change economy on many levels. By and by, truck and taxi drivers will get replaced. The pas-senger car converts from an object of utility to a private space where you can while away the time with everything but driving. This space can be used as private office on the way to the next meeting or to breakfast while driving to work. It also changes the way of travelling by giving the opportunity to bridge vast distances while sleeping in the own bed. The comfort advantages are immense. Even the environment will profit from a clear cut of fuel consump-tion through eco-friendly driving styles and an overall smarter traffic …show more content…

Before talking about the safety potential of this invention, we should answer that ques-tion. In the following we thus want to explore what levels of automation exist and when these levels will become reality. The International On-Road Automated Vehicle Standards Committee of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) has defined six levels of automation (cf. SAE 2014) that are widely used in today’s research. These span from no automation to full automation. Cru-cial to the understanding of the levels’ differences is the definition of the dynamic driving task. It “includes the operational (steering, braking, accelerating, monitoring the vehicle and roadway) and tactical (responding to events, determining when to change lanes, turn, use signals, etc.) aspects of the driving task, but not the strategic (determining destinations and waypoints) aspect of the driving task”. The suggested levels are the