Bill Gates says technology is very close to achieving a huge leap forward in one field.
In fact, the Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder says we are near a "tipping point" and he believes it will happen within the next ten years.
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He even compared the coming life-altering advancement to how the personal computer fundamentally changed how people work.
"This is how close we are to truly self-driving cars," Gates tweeted March 30, attributing his information to the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). "I believe we’ll reach a tipping point within the next decade. When we do, AVs will change transportation as dramatically as the PC changed office work."
The tweet is accompanied by an SAE graphic that shows how current automotive science, using an SAE classification system, is very close to changing from level two to level three.
This means technology is moving from a state where a human monitors the driving environment to the more advanced levels where an automated system monitors it.
The driving levels are defined below by SAE and published in Synopsys.
Level 0 (No Driving Automation): Most vehicles on the road today are Level 0: manually controlled. The human provides the "dynamic driving task" although there may be systems in place to help the driver. An example would be the emergency braking system -- since it technically doesn’t "drive" the vehicle, it does not qualify as automation.
Level 1 (Driver Assistance): This is the lowest level of automation. The vehicle features a single automated system for driver assistance, such as steering or accelerating (cruise control). Adaptive cruise control, where the vehicle can be kept at a safe distance behind the next car, qualifies as Level 1 because the human driver monitors the other aspects of driving such as steering and braking.
Level 2 (Partial Driving Automation): This means advanced driver assistance systems or ADAS. The vehicle can control both steering and accelerating/decelerating. Here the automation falls short of self-driving because a human sits in the driver’s seat and can take control of the car at any time. Tesla (TSLA) Autopilot and Cadillac from General Motors (GM) Super Cruise systems both qualify as Level 2.
Level 3 (Conditional Driving Automation): The jump from Level 2 to Level 3 is substantial from a technological perspective, but subtle if not negligible from a human perspective. Level 3 vehicles have “environmental detection” capabilities and can make informed decisions for themselves, such as accelerating past a slow-moving vehicle. But -- they still require human override. The driver must remain alert and ready to take control if the system is unable to execute the task.
Level 4 (High Driving Automation): The key difference between Level 3 and Level 4 automation is that Level 4 vehicles can intervene if things go wrong or there is a system failure. In this sense, these cars do not require human interaction in most circumstances. However, a human still has the option to manually override. Level 4 vehicles can operate in self-driving mode. But until legislation and infrastructure evolves, they can only do so within a limited area (usually an urban environment where top speeds reach an average of 30mph). This is known as geofencing. As such, most Level 4 vehicles in existence are geared toward ridesharing.
Level 5 (Full Driving Automation): Level 5 vehicles do not require human attention―the “dynamic driving task” is eliminated. Level 5 cars won’t even have steering wheels or acceleration/braking pedals. They will be free from geofencing, able to go anywhere and do anything that an experienced human driver can do. Fully autonomous cars are undergoing testing in several pockets of the world, but none are yet available to the general public.
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