What is an ADA System?

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Between a Boeing 777, Mercedes S-Class, or a B-2 bomber. Which one has the least lines of code?

The answer, the Mercedes S-Class has 100,000,000 lines of code while the Boeing 777 uses over four million lines of code. Meanwhile, the B-2 Bomber has 500 lines of code, making it the most sophisticated airplane in the world. The more lines of code you have, the more bugs are present, and hackers love exploiting bugs in programming. Funny enough, Chrysler is working very closely with the same program team that coded the B-2.

Why do we care?

The auto repair industry has introduced the ADAS System. The Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, those four words insinuate assistive controls. Ideally, this will lower the percentage of car accidents and correct sloppy driving. ADAS, as defined, can use Function Specific automation, combined function automation, limited self-driving automation, conditional self-driving automation, and finally fully autonomous A.I.

To break down ADAS further, each term will refer to a specific level of ADAS (bulleted below):

1. Function Specific Automation – An Assistive control unit designed to aid the driver in recovery functions
2. Combined Function Automation – Two assistive controls that work together to protect and offer recovery relief for the driver
3. Limited Self-Driving Automation – A period of time in which a vehicle drives the passengers. The driver is expected to take over in time and over stressful conditions
4.  Conditional Self-Driving Automation – Vehicle is autonomous under certain conditions
   1. (i.e., Parking and Highways)
5.  Fully Autonomous – Vehicle performs complete drive. Decision trees and signals produced by other fully autonomous vehicles help interpret what other cars/drivers are doing to perform the optimal decision

Future Plans

Currently, we are at level two. There are several vehicles from 2019 and onwards that use a Combined Function Automation to assist in driver care. Nissan is one of the leading pioneers, at least financially, that advertises this feature. Although, most automakers want to skip from level 2 to level four. Level four allows the A.I to perform simple tasks by itself like parking. In the future, automakers want to test level four vehicles on national highways. Level three’s design philosophy is to switch between the driver and A.I. during “adequate transition periods.” The problem, nobody knows what an “adequate transition period.” Auto Manufactures want to avoid level 3 for that reason. Nobody knows when the driver must retake control. After all, the A.I may need to be switched out every 10 minutes, every hour, during stressful conditions, and so on.

Every car maker wants a level 5. A fully autonomous car will respond to your phone/voice and interpret user commands. In a perfect world, a user would say, “I want coffee. Then pick up kids at ‘Saint Peter middle school for the gifted’ at Bayshore road, Naples.” Then the vehicle would search through its GPS, drive the passenger to the nearest coffee shop then proceed to reroute. This will take a lot of trial and error.

 Over time, the world should expect artificial intelligence to assist in our everyday lives.

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