New Documentary Explores the Innovations in Autonomous Vehicles

Team Udayavani, Nov 23, 2018, 2:46 PM IST

Bengaluru: Today Indians spend more time behind the wheels than they would have a few years ago. In cities like Bengaluru, where roads are shrinking and the number of vehicles is increasing exponentially, the situation is worsening. People already convey distance in terms of time rather than kilometres. On an average, a person spends 3-4 hours a day behind the wheel. While all are struggling to claim their share of the downtrodden roads, there fights erupt with a variety of stakeholders ranging from stray cows to speeding taxi drivers.

While in a different world, people are working on the development of autonomous vehicles. As people here still debate if the technology should be human-centric or technology-centric, there are numerous researchers and startups in India that are excelling the development in the field of autonomous vehicles. For the huge population and lack of lane disciplines, the enthusiasm for self-driving technology is quite high.

The documentary includes inputs from leading researchers, academicians and thought leaders such as Nitin Gupta (Professor, IIT Kanpur), Sanjeev Sharma (Founder, Swaayatt Robots), Avneesh Agrawal (CEO, Netradyne), Saurabh Chandra (Co-founder, Ati Motors) and Rajendra Ravi (Director, Institute of Democracy and Sustainability), among others 

The documentary is divided into three chapters. The first chapter, ‘Hello World’, talks about the rapid rise of AI in the transportation sector and how this sudden boom is impacting the lives of people in that sector and also the entire human race in general. Powered by Manipal ProLearn, it gives a plot of recent work in self-driving cars in India.
The second chapter, ‘Human Proxy’, is about the human-technology relationship. It talks about AI taking away jobs vs. various job opportunities that AI can create.

The third chapter, ‘Beyond Consciousness’ addresses how AI lacks consciousness despite all the efforts in the field, the limitations in the current program and what would happen when AI develops consciousness.

Bhasker Gupta, Founder and CEO, Analytics India Magazine said, “While we have been covering the industry in the form of studies, interviews and opinions for a long time, a documentary is a new and interesting way to reach out to the community. We have accumulated views from the industry’s best, that too, on a very debated subject like autonomous and self-driving vehicles. We hope that the audience connects with the documentary, as we all have.”