What a car needs before it stops needing you
San Francisco, CA, February 22, 2017—U.S. commuters spend approximately two days each year stuck in traffic, and more than 30,000 people die each year in car accidents. Autonomous vehicles could vastly improve conditions by:
- Reducing human error that causes 94% of crashes on U.S. roadways
- Cutting CO2 emissions by as much as 300 million tons per year (the equivalent of over 87 coal fired power plants)
- Eliminating the need for up to 90% of parking spots
- Saving $190 billion annually in traffic accident costs
With a self-driving future not too far down the road, Swift Navigation, a San Francisco-based startup building centimeter-accurate GPS technology to power a world of autonomous vehicles, commissioned the infographic, “Approaching the Age of Autonomous Vehicles”.
“The future of autonomous transportation is coming. Cars that drive themselves—a concept that once seemed a futuristic dream—is closer to becoming a reality, but there are still obstacles to overcome,” said Tim Harris, CEO of Swift Navigation. “For example, U.S. interstate lanes have a width of 12 feet, and cars will need to navigate with a very small margin of error. Standard GPS is only accurate to 15 feet, too great for safety-of-life applications. Centimeter-accurate GPS will be an indispensable component of the automotive sensor suite that will make autonomous cars a reality.”
Featuring statistics on U.S. traffic accidents, environmental impacts and the U.S. states that have enacted autonomous vehicle legislation—plus details on the five levels of autonomy and the automotive sensor suite that will ensure self-driving cars maintain their positions even in the most challenging conditions—this infographic maps the state of our progress toward autonomous driving and technical challenges to overcome for the U.S. to be an early leader in safe and accurate autonomous driving.
Accompanying the infographic is a White Paper in which Swift Navigation further demonstrates the potential of centimeter-level localization for autonomous driving and presents real data outputs of performance testing Swift Navigation’s advanced automotive positioning solution.
ABOUT SWIFT NAVIGATION
Swift Navigation, Inc. was founded in 2012 to make GPS positioning technology more accurate and affordable. Today Swift Navigation has gained a reputation for defining a new category of GNSS systems as the industry’s first low-cost, high accuracy real-time kinematics (RTK) receiver. Its GPS and GNSS positioning products are available a fraction of the price of the competition and deliver 100 times better accuracy than the GPS in a cell phone. Swift Navigation’s technology benefits a multitude of industries and applications—including autonomous vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), precision agriculture, robotics, surveying and space. With its innovation and technology honored by Inc.’s 2016 and Forbes 2017 30 Under 30 lists, Swift Navigation is enabling a world where fields farm themselves, drones fly safely and autonomous transportation can take you home. Learn more online at swiftnav.com, follow Swift on Twitter @Swiftnav or download Swift’s latest autonomous vehicle white paper that presents the results of performance testing Swift Navigation’s advanced automotive positioning solution and demonstrates the potential of centimeter-level localization for autonomous driving.