Learning to self-navigate Making that happen won't be easy.
Automakers will need to rely on developments outside the
prescribed boundaries of the auto industry -- in universities
and at supplier facilities. The biggest (and possibly most
important) participants are the sensor suppliers. Makers of
accelerometers and gyroscopes are already working with
automotive teams on the development of systems such as dead
reckoning, which enables vehicles to know where they are. For
dead reckoning, engineers blend information from global
positioning satellites (GPS) with inertial data coming from the
car's onboard sensors. This gives the vehicle a sense of where
it is on a map at any given time. Engineers say that it's
necessary to use both sources because GPS systems don't update
themselves fast enough to provide exact locations. GPS receives
about five signals per second, while inertial sensors may update
at rates of 1kHz or 2kHz. "There's a function called map
matching," Muddiman said. "You know all the physical entiti