What is a self driven car? What level of autonomy is present in these types of cars?

Various automobile manufacturers are working on the concept of self driven car. The development in technology and computers has allowed such a dream to come true. Mercedes Benz has claimed that it will market its self driven car by 2020. Mercedes version of self driven car is said to be able to drive completely in all situations but still the controls can be diverted towards the driver in cases of emergency. It will be equipped with the option that the driver could take control of the vehicle whenever he wants to like for example dealing with traffic signal lights. Mercedes is the pioneer company to demonstrate autonomous driving practically by its car in rural and urban traffic.

Research is also being carried out in Oxford University with Nissan to create autonomous cars that can drive independently sensing the details of the roads like humans do. The cameras and lasers are placed in the chassis of the car to capture the 3D environment of the road for its storage in the computer for future guidance. The stored routes can be used for autonomous driving in future. Therefore the car remembers the routes to reach different places like human mind does. To avoid collision and accidents a laser scanner is used to scan 164ft ahead 13 times per second for obstacles in an 85 degrees field of view. The signal from the laser sensor is passed on to the control system of the car to stop the car if an obstacle is detected. If the driver sees some delay of malfunctioning he can get control of the car by pressing the brake pedal.