This module will introduce you to the main concepts and layout of the specialization and discusses the major advances made in the field over the last two decades, highlighting the most recent progress made by major players in terms of safety and performance metrics, where available.

Self-driving cars present an extremely rich and inter-disciplinary problem. This module introduces the language and structure of the problem definition, defining the most salient elements of the driving task and the driving environment.

System architectures for self-driving vehicles are extremely diverse, as no standardized solution has yet emerged. This module describes both the hardware and software architectures commonly used and some of the tradeoffs in terms of cost, reliability, performance and complexity that constrain autonomous vehicle design.

As the self-driving domain matures, the requirement for safety assurance on public roads become more critical to self-driving developers. You will evaluate the challenges and approaches employed to date to tackle the immense challenge of assuring the safe operation of autonomous vehicles in an uncontrolled public road driving environment.

The first task for automating an driverless vehicle is to define a model for how the vehicle moves given steering, throttle and brake commands. This module progresses through a sequence of increasing fidelity physics-based models that are used to design vehicle controllers and motion planners that adhere to the limits of vehicle capabilities.

Longitudinal control of an autonomous vehicle involves tracking a speed profile along a fixed path, and can be achieved with reasonable accuracy using classic control techniques. This week, you will learn how to develop a baseline controller that is applicable for a significant subset of driving conditions, which include most non-evasive or highly-dynamic motions.

This week, you will learn about how lateral vehicle control ensures that a fixed path through the environment is tracked accurately. You will see how to define geometry of the path following control problem and develop both a simple geometric control and a dynamic model predictive control approach.

For the last week of the course, now you will get hands on with a simulation of an autonomous vehicle that requires longitudinal and lateral vehicle control design to track a predefined path along a racetrack with a given speed profile. You are encouraged to modify the speed profile and/or path to improve their lap time, without any requirement to do so. Work and play!