When driving, Clara - Marina Martinez makes a note of any unusual behaviour she sees on the road. She then feeds these into machine- learning algorithms(算法), a form of AI, which she is helping develop for Porsche Engineering.
Those algorithms are intended to produce a system reliable enough for a car to drive itself. Such a fully autonomous car, known in the industry as Level 5, should be able to complete an ____ entire journey without any intervention (介入) from the driver, and deal with all situations on the road. But this is proving hard to achieve, and many attempts to do so are being abundoned. Last year, for instance, Uber sold off its unit developing self- driving cars.
Autonomous vehicles are said to be not just convenient but potentially safer. However, just as people take time to learn how to drive safely, so do machines. And machines are not quick learners. The RAND Corporation calculates that to develop a system 20% safer than a human driver, 100 self- driving cars would have to operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Carmakers such as Porsche therefore speed up the development process using simulators(模拟器). These teach software about dangers rarely encountered in reality. Dr Martinez and her colleagues employ "game engines" to do this. These are used to create virtual worlds through which the software can drive. Objects in these virtual worlds are assigned their physical characteristics ( ie, buildings are hard, people are soft) so that the sensors in vehicles respond in the appropriate way. Once the software has been trained, it is tested in real autonomous vehicles by re- creating those situations on a test track.
How quickly all this will translate into reality remains to be seen. Both regulators and customers will need to overcome the doubt that a software driver really can be safer than a human being.
From Porsche's point of view, though, there is another question. Given that much of the reason owning a sports car is for owners to show off their driving skills, just how big a market will there be for a version where software takes those bragging(炫耀的) rights away?