| Self-driving cars
Throughout 2019 such headlines as “Waymo’s robotaxi pilot surpassed 6,200 riders in its first month in California” appeared in many famous IT-related resources. Indeed, the idea of autonomous driving is not a utopia anymore, and the question is not “if” but “when”. Elon Musk’s Tesla is one of the leaders in that industry. Undoubtedly, they achieved great progress in developing self-driving vehicles but they are still far from developing a completely autonomous car by 2020, as had been promised. So far, all manufacturers are no further than at the third level of autonomy (SAE defined the five levels of automobile autonomy), which means that all safety functions are automated, but it is the driver who is responsible for taking over in an emergency. It still requires the driver to be focused on the driving process despite the car doing all the tasks. In order to break new ground and to achieve the fifth level of autonomy, 5G connection with ubiquitous coverage is obligatory. The speed of 4G LTE is not enough for sensors to respond to an emergency case in a matter of milliseconds. Therefore, it would be premature to assert that completely autonomous cars will be on the market by 2020, but to achieve a transition from the third level of automobile autonomy to the forth one is quite realistic. Well, this technology still has room for growth.
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