A Driverless Future in India: Engineering Challenges in Design and Automation

A myriad of technological advancements in the automotive industry have made the idea of ?self - driving? cars increasingly desirable over the past few years. However, automation technology has not yet made it to the consumer vehicle market in India, despite being commercially available in most major countries. This study found that this adoption gap is rooted in systemic issues in driving conditions that have made it difficult to implement a safe ?driverless? experience for the end - user. The lack of sufficient standardisation across road networks and sub - regions of India impedes the accuracy and universality of perception systems in AVs, while sparse infrastructure and data availability issues obstruct online neural networks from being implemented reliably. Additionally, behavioural volatility on the road makes India a unique challenge for modelling the decisions of external agents from the vehicle?s perspective. The paper also simultaneously explores alternative technologies that should be considered by manufacturers and regulatory bodies, but cost and pragmatic viability must be integrated into future research before full - scale implementations are initiated, especially in the context of developing countries.