Self-driving cars are already carrying passengers, steering through highways, and forcing regulators to answer questions that once belonged to science fiction. This book explains how they work in everyday language.
We covers the race from early radio-controlled cars and DARPA desert contests to Waymo, Tesla, robotaxis, driver-assist systems, and autonomous trucks. The book explains the SAE levels of automation so readers can separate Level 2 driver assistance from Level 4 robotaxi service and the still-unreached target of Level 5.
Inside the car, the book follows the full technical stack: cameras, radar, lidar, sensor fusion, HD maps, SLAM, neural networks, object detection, prediction, path planning, and control. It also covers the hard cases: road work, bad weather, confusing human behavior, cyber risk, liability, and the black-box problem in AI decision-making.
Written in simple everyday language, this is an essential weekend guide for busy people who want to understand algorithms and state of the art of self-driving cars.