Self-driving vehicles are steadily becoming a reality despite the many hurdles still to be overcome – and they could change our world in some unexpected ways.

无人驾驶汽车正在逐步成为现实，但仍有许多需要解决的难题，它们可能以意想不到的方式改变我们的世界。

It's a late night in the Metro area of Phoenix, Arizona. Under the artificial glare of street lamps, a car can be seen slowly approaching. Active sensors on the vehicle radiate a low hum. A green and blue 'W' glows from the windscreen, giving off just enough light to see inside – to a completely empty driver seat.

美国亚利桑那州凤凰城区的一个深夜，在路灯的人造强光下，可以看见一辆汽车缓缓驶来。汽车上的主动传感器发出低沉的嗡嗡声，挡风玻璃上闪烁着绿色和蓝色的“W”标志，发出光亮足以使人看见车内——驾驶座上空无一人。

The wheel navigates the curb steadily, parking as an arrival notification pings on the phone of the person waiting for it. When they open the door to climb inside, a voice greets them over the vehicle's sound system. "Good evening, this car is all yours – with no one upfront," it says.

汽车沿着路边平稳行驶，停车时会将到达通知发送到等车者的手机上。当他们打开车门坐进去时，汽车音响系统会发出语音问候：“晚上好，这辆车是您的了——无人驾驶”。

This is a Waymo One robotaxi, hailed just 10 minutes ago using an app. The open use of this service to the public, slowly expanding across the US, is one of the many developments signalling that driverless technology is truly becoming a part of our lives.

这是一款Waymo One自动驾驶出租车，十分钟前有人通过APP叫来这辆车。该服务已向公众开放，逐步普及到美国各地，许多这类动向表明，无人驾驶技术正在真正走入我们的生活。

The promise of driverless technology has long been enticing. It has the potential to transform our experience of commuting and long journeys, take people out of high-risk working environments and streamline our industries. It's key to helping us build the cities of the future, where our reliance and relationship with cars are redefined – lowering carbon emissions and paving the way for more sustainable ways of living. And it could make our travel safer. The World Health Organization estimates that more than 1.3 million people die each year as a result of road traffic crashes. "We want safer roads and less fatalities. Automation ultimately could provide that," says Camilla Fowler, head of automated transport for the UK's Transport Research Laboratory (TRL).

无人驾驶技术的前景一直很诱人。它可能改变我们的通勤和长途旅行体验，使人远离高危工作环境，提高各行各业的效率。它是帮助我们打造未来城市的关键，我们对汽车的依赖以及与汽车的关系被重新定义——减少碳排放，为更加可持续的生活方式铺路。无人驾驶技术还能使我们的出行更加安全，据世界卫生组织估算，每年有130多万人死于道路交通事故。“我们需要提高公路安全和减少死亡事故，自动驾驶技术最终可实现这个目标”，英国交通研究实验室的自动化运输主管卡蜜拉·富勒说道。

But in order for driverless technology to become mainstream, much still needs to change.

但要想让无人驾驶技术成为主流，仍有许多东西有待于改变。

"Driverless vehicles should be a very calm and serene way of getting from A to B. But not every human driver around it will be behaving in that way," says David Hynd, chief scientist for safety and investigations at TRL. "It's got to be able to cope with human drivers speeding, for instance, or breaking the rules of the road."

“无人驾驶汽车应该是一种泰然自若地从一地到达另一地的交通方式，但在它周围不是所有的人类驾驶员都那样开车”，英国交通研究实验室的安全与调查首席科学家戴维·辛德说道。“举例来说，它必须有能力应对人类驾驶员的加速行驶或违反交通规则”。

And that's not the only challenge. There's regulation, rethinking the highway code, public perception, improving the infrastructure of our streets, towns, cities, and the big question of ultimate liability for road accidents. "The whole insurance industry is looking into how they're going to deal with that change from a person being responsible and in charge to the vehicle doing that," says Richard Jinks, vice president of commercial at Oxfordshire-based driverless vehicle software company Oxbotica, which has been testing its technology in cars and delivery vehicles at several locations across the UK and Europe.

这不是唯一的挑战。此外还有监管、重新审视交通法规、公众认知、改善街道和城镇的基础设施、以及交通事故的责任认定这一重大问题。“整个保险行业都在研究如何应对肇事车辆的责任人出现的这一变化”，位于牛津郡的无人驾驶汽车软件公司Oxbotica的副总裁理查德·金克斯说道。该公司一直在英国和欧洲多地的乘用车和货车上测试技术。

The ultimate vision experts are working towards is of completely driverless vehicles, both within industry, wider transport networks, and personal-use cars, that can be deployed and used anywhere and everywhere around the world.

专家正在努力实现的终极目标是全无人驾驶汽车，包括行业内部、更广泛的交通运输网，以及可以在世界任何地方部署和使用的个人用车。
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Mcity puts driverless cars through their paces in an environment that mimics a real city, complete with crossing pedestrians

Mcity在模拟城市的环境中测试无人驾驶汽车，这里有穿过人行横道的行人。

But with all these hurdles in place, what exactly does the next 10 years have in store for autonomous vehicles?

但面对这些难题，未来十年自动驾驶汽车的发展前景究竟如何？

Two years from now

展望未来两年

The biggest hurdle for those in the driverless technology industry is how to get the cars to operate safely and effectively in complex and unpredictable human environments. Cracking this part of the puzzle will be the major focus of the next two years.

对于无人驾驶技术的业内人士来说，最大的难题是如何让汽车在复杂和不可预知的人类环境中安全高效地行驶，未来两年的重点是突破这一难题。

At the Mcity Test Facility at the University of Michigan, experts are addressing this. The world's first purpose-built testing ground for autonomous vehicles, it's a mini-town of sorts, made up of 16 acres of road and traffic infrastructure. It includes traffic signals and signs, underpasses, building facades, tree cover, home and garage exterior for testing delivery and ride-hailing, and different terrains such as road, pedestrian walkways, railway tracks, and road-markings which the vehicles must navigate. It's here that experts test scenarios that even the most experienced of drivers may be pressed to handle, from children playing in the street to two cars trying to merge on a junction at the same time.

Mcity测试设施位于美国密歇根大学，那里的专家正在解决该问题。这里是世界上第一座专为无人驾驶汽车建造的试验场地，由占地16英亩的道路与交通基础设施组成，堪称迷你城镇。这里有交通信号和标志、地下通道、建筑立面、林木植被、用于测试运货与打车的住宅和车库外部。地形包括公路、人行道、铁路、以及车辆必须驶过的道路标记。专家在这里测试各种场景，就连最有经验的司机可能也无法轻松应对，诸如儿童在街上玩耍、两车试图同时在交叉路口并道。

"In order to test driverless technology like this, it depends on hundreds of different variables in any given situation," explains Necmiye Ozay, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Michigan. Her solution is to create a group of varied thinkers.

“为了像这样测试无人驾驶技术，需要依靠任意场景下数百种不同情况”，密歇根大学电子与计算机工程副教授奈米克耶·奥塞解释道。她采取的办法是组建一个由形形色色的思考者参与的团队。

"We're trying to bring people from different parts of the university – not only engineers, but we have people from across disciplines such as psychology, more human-machine-interaction type people, because there are lots of angles to this problem we are trying to solve when it comes to safety," says Ozay. In the facility, Ozay and her team can test different traffic scenarios, as well as explore how autonomous vehicles communicate with each other yet keep vehicle and personal data secure from hackers.

“我们试图从密歇根大学的各个领域招募人员，不仅有工程师，还有心理学、人机互动等跨学科人士，因为我们正在尝试从多个角度解决安全问题”，奥塞说道。在测试设施内，奥塞和她的团队测试各种交通场景，并探索无人驾驶汽车如何相互沟通，但又要防范黑客盗取汽车和私人数据。
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That self-driving taxis are already on the roads in Phoenix, Arizona, is due to a prolonged testing process like the one Ozay's team is conducting. Currently only available as a test service to the public in small defined areas, in the next two years there are plans to release the taxis on a greater and wider scale. For example, US-based company Waymo is currently rolling out to new city test sites that could very realistically see robotaxis operational in San Francisco and New York by 2023. But their co-chief executive Tekedra Mawakana was cautious to say what further roll out of its service there might be, and where, because "safety takes time".

无人驾驶出租车已经驶上亚利桑那州凤凰城的公路，因为已通过“奥塞”等团队进行的长期测试。目前仅向小范围地区的民众提供测试服务，计划未来两年扩大服务规模和范围。例如，总部位于美国的Waymo公司正在将服务推向新的城市试点，预计2023年，旧金山和纽约将真正看到自动驾驶出租车被投入运营。但关于公司可能进一步推出什么服务及服务地点，联席首席执行官特凯德拉·马瓦卡纳三缄其口，因为“安全需要时间”。

AutoX, a start-up funded by Alibaba, launched its fully driverless RoboTaxi in Shanghai, China in 2020. By 2023 it's likely their service will be available in other cities across China, as well as in California.

2020年，由阿里巴巴集团投资的初创公司AutoX在中国上海推出全无人驾驶出租车RoboTaxi。预计2023年，该公司可能将服务推广至中国其他城市，以及美国加州。

Much of the driverless technology already in use exists in industrial settings like mines, warehouses, and ports, but Hynd believes in the next two years we can expect to see this extended to "last mile delivery". This means the final part of a journey for goods and services – the point at which they are delivered to the consumer. For example, autonomous HGV trucks on motorways or even delivery vehicles for products and groceries.

许多正在使用的无人驾驶技术也存在于工业领域，诸如采矿、仓库、港口。但Hynd相信在未来两年内，我们可预见到无人驾驶技术被用于“最后一英里配送”，即商品和服务被配送到消费者手中的最后一段路程。例如，高速公路上的自动驾驶重卡，甚至产品和食品货车。

Five years from now

展望未来五年

While Apple says it is aiming to launch fully self-driving electric cars four years from now, industry experts are more cautious about what the near-future holds.

苹果公司声称，计划在未来四年内推出全无人驾驶电动汽车，但业内专家对不远的未来更加谨慎。

According to Fowler, the conversation around regulation and insurance companies' new role within this transport space needs to mature. "It's got to be a very iterative approach where we're starting with pods and shuttles, or we're starting with off-highway vehicles where you can see such a benefit, and you've got a more controlled environment potentially, and what works with that," she says. "Then we can scale it up and across more vehicle types, more use cases."

富勒表示，这一交通领域的监管以及保险公司的新角色需要深思熟虑。“必须采取循序渐进的方式，我们正在以豆荚车和区间车为起点，或者以非公路汽车为起点，这样做的好处显而易见，你可能有更加可控的环境，知道什么适应那种环境”，她说道。“然后我们可以扩大规模，增加车辆类型和使用场景”。

Autonomous shuttles, such as these in Iserlohn, Germany, could help to lix passengers on public transport to other parts of a city

在德国伊瑟隆市，这种自动驾驶区间车可以帮助公交乘客往返于城市的不同地区。

One new space we can expect to see driverless technology deployed in is high-risk environments, from nuclear plants to military settings, to limit the dangers to human life, says Fowler. A Rio Tinto mine in Western Australia, for example, is currently operating the largest autonomous fleet in the world. The trucks are controlled by a centralised system miles away in Perth.

我们可预见到使用无人驾驶技术的新领域是高危环境，诸如核电站、军事环境等等，从而减少人类面临的危险，富勒说道。例如：“力拓集团”在西澳大利亚州的一座矿山目前使用世界上最庞大的自动驾驶车队，这些卡车由几英里外的佩思市的中央控制系统操控。

"If you can take people out of that and you can have vehicles that are driving themselves, and are fully automated even, if you've got somebody who's remotely needing to control that vehicle in that high-risk environment then that's got to be good," says Fowler.

“如果让人摆脱高危环境，使用无人甚至全无人驾驶车辆，如果让人远程控制高危环境中的车辆，那一定很棒”，富勒说道。

In the next five years most driverless technology will remain behind the scenes. TRL is investigating the potential for driverless HGVs on motorways, including the idea of platooning vehicles. Platoons are a group of semi-autonomous vehicles that drive a close distance between each other, stopping other vehicles from separating them. By driving closer together, vehicles in a platoon can be more fuel efficient by taking advantage of the slipstream of the truck in front while also helping to reduce congestion as the lorries take up less overall space on the road. Also in this space is Plus, the first self-driving truck manufacturer, whose European pilots commenced this year after a successful trial on Wufengshan highway in China's Yangtze Delta economic centre.

在未来五年里，大多数无人驾驶技术仍将在幕后发挥作用。英国交通研究实验室正在研究自动驾驶重卡在高速公路上的潜力，包括队列行驶概念。队列行驶是指一队半自动驾驶车辆彼此短车距行驶，以防其他车辆加塞。由于缩短了彼此的车距，车队里的卡车可利用前面卡车的滑流来提高燃油效率，同时有助于减少交通堵塞，因为车队占用的公路总面积减少。该领域的智加科技（Plus）是首个自动驾驶卡车制造商，今年启动了欧洲的试点项目，之前已在中国长江三角洲经济中心的五峰山高速公路上成功进行了测试。

Away from these industries, Ozay further predicts that "we will possibly see lighter robotic vehicles that can potentially use sidewalks and bike paths with limited speeds – for delivering things such as food and groceries."

除了这些行业，奥塞进一步预测说：“未来我们可能看到轻型汽车机器人在人行道和自行车道上限速运行，配送食品杂货等等。

When it comes to public transport, Oxbotica is also working with German-based vehicle systems specialist ZF over the next five years to make the driverless shuttle a true mainstay for European cities, operating on roads, as well as at airports, much in the same way buses do now. "The shuttles in airports we see today on rails won't need those rails in five years from now. This means driverless shuttles have the potential to transport you from the car park to the airport, then straight through to your gate and the plane," Jinks explains.

在公共交通领域，Oxbotica公司正在与专注于车辆系统的德国采埃孚集团（ZF）展开合作，计划五年内让无人驾驶区间车在欧洲城市里成为真正的主流，像现在的公交车一样在公路和机场运行。“我们如今在机场看到的有轨区间车将在五年内摆脱轨道，这意味着无人驾驶区间车可能把你从停车场运送至机场，然后直达登机口去乘坐飞机”，金克斯说道。

For users, this could mean more reliable and cost-efficient transport systems. "Interlixing autonomous transport systems to bring a public transport system that is as efficient as you jumping in your own car and driving it yourself has got to be the answer to congestion in the future," adds Jinks.

对于用户而言，这意味着可靠性和成本效益更高的运输系统。“各种自动运输系统互联形成公共交通系统，它的效率不亚于你驾驶私家车，这是未来解决交通堵塞问题的办法”，金克斯补充道。

Seven years from now

展望未来七年
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All experts agree that the next seven years will depend on the successes and failures of initial deployments, and how safety and public trust evolves accordingly. However, most hope that city redesigns will enable more adoption of the technology and help move us into modern, and more efficient ways of living. "If you live in a dense, urban area, the hope is that you'd be able to rely on mobility as a service. You could dial up the car, it would arrive in two minutes, and you make your journey. You wouldn't need to have those vast rows of parked cars in your street, which makes the street more navigable for the automated vehicle," says Hynd.

所有的专家都认同，未来七年取决于初期布局的成败，以及安全性和公信力的变化。但多数人希望，城市的重新规划将使无人驾驶技术变得更加普及，帮助我们步入更加高效的现代生活方式。“如果你居住在人口密集的市区，希望你能够依靠出行服务。你可以打车，两分钟后就能上车，踏上你的旅途。街道上没必要停放成排的汽车，从而使无人驾驶汽车畅行无阻”，辛德说道。

Without parked cars lining the street, roads could be narrower, making way for more green spaces. But while proponents of self-driving vehicles insist they will make our roads safer, there are some who feel pedestrians and autonomous vehicles simply can't mix. It could mean that our cities and the way we use them may need to be reimagined.

街道两旁没有了停放的汽车，公路可能变得更窄，为绿化带腾出更多空间。无人驾驶汽车的支持者坚信它们能让公路变得更加安全，但也有人认为行人和无人驾驶汽车根本无法融合，这意味着我们可能需要重新构思城市及其使用方式。

Some of this thinking is already taking place. In 2018, IKEA developed a concept autonomous vehicle that can double up as meeting rooms, hotels, and stores. The impact this type of innovation would have is reduced requirement for travel in the first place, offering instead interchangeable, on-demand environments as and when we need them. Our needs could be met right where we are.

一部分想法正在成为现实。2018年，宜家（IKEA）研发出一款无人驾驶概念车，兼具会议室、酒店、商店功能。这种创新产生的影响首先是减少出行需求，按需向我们提供可替换的环境，使我们在原地就能满足需求。

Ozay expects many more self-driving options to be available for customers during this time, including in the passenger vehicle space. "My hope is that cars will be smart enough to say 'yes' or 'no' when asked if they can reliably and safely get a non-driver from point A to point B on a given day, by analysing the weather and traffic conditions beforehand," she explains.

奥塞希望那时的顾客将有更多的无人驾驶选择，包括乘用车领域。“我希望当无人驾驶汽车被问及能否在某一天安全可靠地将乘客从甲地送至乙地时，它可以事先通过分析天气和交通状况，智能地给出‘是’或‘否’的回答”，她解释道。

10 years from now

展望未来十年

Despite all the developments and innovations the next decade is likely to hold, some experts still feel we might be a way off from full deployment of driverless vehicles. By 2031, "full-self driving – human-level or above, in all possible conditions, where you can put kids by themselves in the car to send them to arbitrary locations without worrying – is not something I expect to see," says Ozay.

尽管未来十年可能取得这些发展和创新，但仍有一些专家认为，我们距离全面部署无人驾驶汽车可能还有一段距离。到2031年，“全无人驾驶汽车——在所有的环境中达到或超越人类水平，你可以放心地把孩子放入车里，将他们送至任意地点——我预测达不到这种水平”，奥塞说道。

Once commuters can let their cars take over the driving completely, will it free them up for new kinds of productivity and activities?

当上班族的汽车完全自动驾驶时，这能让他们释放出新的生产力和活力吗？

Hynd agrees that full automation is unlikely on this timescale. "With anything transport infrastructure, anything that society uses, so many other things need to come into play. And I don't just mean regulation," he says. Safety will be a major hurdle, especially for countries slower to adopt the change because of the huge costs involved. Infrastructure will also dictate how fast and effectively this technology can roll out, and public perception and willingness to use autonomous vehicles will need to increase according to Hynd.

辛德也认为，未来十年不太可能实现完全无人驾驶。“除了一切交通基础设施和社会资源，许多其他方面也需要发挥作用，我指的不仅仅是监管”，他说道。安全也是一大障碍，尤其是因耗资巨大而适应变化较慢的国家。基础设施也将决定无人驾驶技术投入使用的速度和效率，提高公众对无人驾驶汽车的认知和使用意愿也是必要的，辛德说道。

But not everyone agrees. Jinks is confident that we'll see autonomous vehicles on the roads at the same time as human-driven vehicles in 10 years from now. In this vein, you may very well be stepping onto a driverless shuttle at the airport, then into a self-driving taxi to take you to your final destination.

但并非所有人都认同这种观点。金克斯相信，十年后我们将看见无人和有人驾驶汽车同时行驶在公路上。在这种情况下，你很可能在机场搭乘一辆无人驾驶区间车，然后换乘无人驾驶出租车到达最终目的地。

Owning a driverless car in the next 10 years is less likely – it'll still be too expensive for most people, according to Hynd. But the promise of driverless technology is about unchaining us from our reliance on cars, and how that can transform the use of our time and our environment.

在辛德看来，未来十年里个人不太可能拥有无人驾驶汽车，因为对于大多数人来说还是太贵。但无人驾驶技术的潜力将使我们摆脱对汽车的依赖，改变我们利用时间和环境的方式。

"This is one of the biggest engineering problems that we're trying to solve in a century," Jinks says. "It will be an evolution over time from less complex environments and capabilities, to more complex, to everywhere. It's a continuum, and think about that continuum... It will keep improving over time. These things will continuously learn from each other."

“这是我们在未来一个世纪里试图解决的最重大的工程问题之一”，金克斯说道。“这是一个从不太复杂向较为复杂的环境和能力循序渐进的过程，最终到达任何地点。该过程具有连续性，想一想连续性……随着时间不断发展，这些东西将不断地相互借鉴”。

Much in the same way that electric charging stations have slowly entered car parks, side streets, and service stations, so too will autonomous vehicles eventually make their way into our everyday worlds. Years from now, we may well be wondering how we ever lived without them.

正如充电站已逐步出现在停车场、小巷、加油站，最终无人驾驶汽车也将步入我们的日常生活。若干年后我们很可能纳闷，过去没有无人驾驶汽车是怎么生活的。