The world is on a fast track toward an autonomous future. From off-road tractors and rural transit systems to air vehicles and space exploration, automation will enhance safety, increase efficiency and improve people’s lives. The more we can automate, the more we can protect people’s life and happiness.
To make the autonomous future safe and secure, manufacturers and operators will need reliable, assured positioning, said Michael Ritter, president of Hexagon’s Autonomy & Positioning division. At the HxGN LIVE Global 2022 event, he gave an overview of assured positioning and demonstrated how it provides the foundation for safe autonomy.
Ritter explained how positioning technologies can enable the future of autonomy for good publicity across industries including agriculture, mining and automotive. “We’ve all heard about autonomy,” he said. “What’s one of the big problems there? It doesn’t always work as advertised.” He mentioned Tesla’s AutoPilot as an example. “In our industry, the non-consumer world, we can’t have that,” he added. “We need to have autonomy solutions that we can trust.” “If that is not a hundred percent waterproof, crystal clear, and protected from outside interference (干扰) and cybersecurity threats, you can’t trust that positioning,” he said. “We have to know where we are at all times, and we cannot have that signal falsified (歪曲).”
While Ritter doesn’t think he’ll see the universal use of autonomous vehicles in passenger traffic during his lifetime “because laws will be in the way,” he said applications in “off-road autonomy—construction, mining and agriculture—are here today, which all take place in controllable spaces; laws are not such a big problem,” he said. “This is happening right now. We don’t have to wait 10 to 20 years for that.”
However, a big safety challenge in expanding autonomy is anticipating all the corner cases, or “all the stuff that could happen once in a lifetime,” Ritter said. Those can be overcome by real-life testing, multiplying that with simulation (模拟) “a hundred million times over,” and then going “back into real life” and performing “real, extreme Testing.”
12. What’s Ritter’s purpose of mentioning Tesla’s AutoPilot?
A.To show its good publicity. | B.To advocate its assured positioning. |
C.To put forward reliable autonomy solutions. | D.To serve as a reminder for the non-consumer world. |
13. What is Ritter’s attitude towards the development of autonomy according to paragraph 4?
A.Cautious. | B.Optimistic. | C.Doubtful. | D.Objective. |
14. What does the underlined word “that” in the last paragraph refer to?
A.Real and extreme testing. | B.Real-life testing. |
C.A big safe challenge. | D.Expanding autonomy. |
15. What is the text mainly about?
A.Big challenges for future automation. | B.The impact of automation on daily life. |
C.Necessary regulations for safe automation. | D.Different fields of automation development. |