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Autonomous and connected vehicle technologies are among the most active researched areas in the automotive industry because of their far-reaching impacts on our modern society.
The future of mobility, deployed in part through autonomous vehicles (AVs) and connected vehicles (CVs), will change several aspects of our society in a fundamental way. This driving force is not only restricted to transit; but, it extends to parking, infrastructure/urban planning, smart cities, cyber-security, liability, legislations, and so on.
It is worthwhile noting that AV/CV technologies is expected to provide effective solutions for a wide range of applications from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to smart mining, and now interest is spreading to other areas where human-operated vehicles is unsafe.
In fact, some areas like cargo transportation using UAVs, for instance, can offer a great framework for the fine-tuning of AV/CV technologies before their widespread to the human transportation sector. It is inevitable that the fully-enabled AV/CV world is going through a safer transition step process.
This is witnessed by the following autonomous levels:
- No automation (full human driver control)
- Function-specific automation (an advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) assisting a human driver)
- Combined-function automation (an ADAS with at least two primary controls such as adaptive cruise control combined with lane departure avoidance
- Limited self-driving automation (an automated driving system (ADS) performing all driving aspects under some circumstances and requests human driver control in the other circumstances). For example, Google Car that is completely self-driving in specific driving scenarios and provides adequate transition time for the driver to take control, when it is needed
- Full self-driving automation (no driver intervention but entering the destination)
- Full automation (human becomes a passenger)
Recent advances in AV/CV technologies are raising the urgency for the development of the underlying intelligent infrastructure to keep up with their fast growing requirements. AVs will be connected to various entities which are summarizes as vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) and cloud (V2C), vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P), and vehicle-to-everything (V2X).
This high level of connectivity will allow AVs to not only improve vehicle safety, but also to improve vehicle efficiency and commute times. However, this also raises issues with security, privacy, and data analytics due to the large volume of information being accessed and shared at a given time. It is without doubt that the infrastructure of AVs is going to be complex and would require a high level of redundancy for a safe operation.
Finally, governments and insurance companies are excepted to have a significant role in paving the road for a smooth implementation of AVs and their acceptance by the public. | 
