SAE, the acclaimed engineering group, has updated their Levels of Driving Automation chart. Otherwise known as the J3016, this chart and surrounding definitions allow automakers and policymakers to have a standard definition of automated driving across the globe.
The engineering firm and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) first started defining autonomous driving back in 2014.
The basic framework of the chart remains the same, with the same five levels of automation. The biggest changes are the inclusion of additional definitions in the Level 3 and Level 4 categories.
- Level 0:
No Driving Automation
- Level 1:
Driver Assistance
- Level 2:
Partial Driving Automation
- Level 3:
Conditional Driving Automation
- Level 4:
High Driving Automation
- Level 5:
Full Driving Automation
Also, updates included new rules for remote driving, which added remote drivers and remote assistance definitions.
Essentially, at level 3, a driver may have some automated fallback. While at level four, there is a possibility of alerts to users in the vehicle.
As companies continue to push the envelope of what cars can do either through a remote person or themselves, SAE and the ISO update their rules accordingly. We should expect to see yet another update to the contents of the levels as autonomous technology continues to develop.
