Ford touts self-driving car, launches global mobility experiments

[Wretched]

Ford today showcased the semi-autonomous vehicles it has on the road already and gave attendees a glimpse into fully autonomous vehicles now in development.

The carmaker also announced a series of experiments with drivers around the globe to test its vehicle-to-vehicle connectivity, autonomous cars and the use of big data collected from vehicles.

Semi-autonomous vehicle features available today from Ford include lane-keeping assist, adaptive cruise control, pre-collision assist with pedestrian detection and active park assist. Coming soon: traffic jam assist.

The company said a fully autonomous Ford Fusion Hybrid research vehicle is undergoing road testing now. The vehicle relies on the same semi-autonomous technology used in Ford vehicles today, while adding four LiDAR (light, radar) sensors to generate a real-time 3D map of the surrounding environment.

"We're already manufacturing and selling semi-autonomous vehicles that use software and sensors to steer into both parallel and perpendicular parking spaces, adjust speed based on traffic flow or apply the brakes in an emergency," Ford CEO Mark Fields said in a statement. "There will be a Ford autonomous vehicle in the future, and we take putting one on the road very seriously."

Ford also announced its "Smart Mobility" plan, which encompasses experiments in 25 locations, from India to Palo Alto, Calif. The tests address four global megatrends: explosive population growth, an expanding middle class, air quality and public health concerns and changing customer priorities.

The tests are being done mainly in urban areas such as London and Atlanta, and involve myriad topics such as data-driven insurance, rapid recharge stations for electric vehicles and car swapping between commuters.

The company's big data experiments, for example, involve 200 Ford employees from Dearborn, Mich. who volunteered to have data collected from in-vehicle sensors so Ford could study driving habits to optimize vehicle performance.

In Bangalore, Ford is working with Zoomcar to test a car-sharing concept that would allow small groups, such as co-workers, apartment dwellers and families, to share a vehicle among multiple drivers.

In London, Ford is collecting data from vehicle sensors to analyze vehicle performance to determine how it might help lower insurance rates for good drivers. The experiment is similar to others such as Progressive Insurance's SnapShot and State Farm's InDrive, which use OBD-II dongles to transmit information about your driving habits in exchange for lower rates.

Also in London, drivers volunteered to use plug-in devices that create live data on traffic and parking. Ford's City Dash app tells users whether they are legally parked. If not, the app recommends the nearest open spot. It allows drivers to pay for parking meters by mobile phone, and identifies the closest available parking spots to the driver's final destination.

Using golf carts from Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Ford is testing whether a person sitting in a remote location can access real-time video streamed over LTE to drive the carts. The outcome could be a more affordable and effective way to share or park vehicles using a remote "valet."

http://www.computerworld.com/article...periments.html

[mik]

Ok, so more and more car companies are getting on board with the autonomas cars , once they start actually selling them.... does anyone here have interest in owning one ?

[LoudPipes]

Originally Posted by mik

Ok, so more and more car companies are getting on board with the autonomas cars , once they start actually selling them.... does anyone here have interest in owning one ?

Yep.

When I can hop in and say “home James” after an evening on the turps or punch in my holiday designation then lay back and listen to Dean Martin croon out a few tunes as I drift off to sleep I’ll be a happy man.

I’ll have the XY for the dry spells and other occasions when I feel like doing the driving myself.

[Franco Cozzo]

Driverless car races ftw

[LoudPipes]

From the Mercedes-Benz website.


http://youtu.be/ogqCuGJWuC4


And this is the clip of the car.


http://youtu.be/DYTV4d-Gn0s





/

[Wretched]

There are days that I just simply cannot be bothered driving. The days I have to drive to work (due to PT issues usually) and in peak hour traffic. I could just lounge back and wait.

[Maka]

Originally Posted by mik

Ok, so more and more car companies are getting on board with the autonomas cars , once they start actually selling them.... does anyone here have interest in owning one ?

Not until legislation forces me to.

cheer's, Maka

[Burnout]

This will never happen to me! If they stop me from driving a car, I'll get meself a horse again. I come form a generation born to drive...

[mik]

Autonamas cars sounds good in theory, a few things come to mind,
one is my mistrust for when other people......... or things are driving me😈,
I'd like to know if something happened out of the ordinary the self drive would take evasive action and not just let me get squashed between two buses or something.

also I'm thinking roadway authorities would have to do their part in making sure that the roads are properly line marked and built so autonamas vehicles know where they are supposed to sit on the road ?
yes i get that they also use GPS. ....... but GPS accuracy varies.

For autonamas vehicles in mass to really take over and be at their best, vehicles will have to talk to each other wirelessly I would imagine and possibly have dedicated area's /roads ?
It would be a few years before I would be trusting the auto drive to ferry my old carcass around .

[malazn mafia]

Good for long haul trips. who can stand maneuvring a car at the walking pace 100/110 kph for hours on end. Airports and flying sucks these days too, so why not let the computer do the driving (while keeping an eye on it). Only other option is convert all 110kph zones to autobahn to get around this massive country in reasonable times or comfort..

But I wouldn't let a computer drive me around suburbia. Too many variables and unexpected events when maneuvring around human beings at close range..

[LoudPipes]

I feel the same as some others in that the normal human characteristic of mistrust of this type of technology would make it difficult to give over to a possible malfunctioning machine but in reality a working framework is still a long way off.

Still people were also frightened of change and innovation at the start of the industrial revolution as they were frightened by the introduction of horseless carriages and of modern medicine (burn the witches) and a whole host of other things they didn’t understand.

Possibly in some future time people will not only be very comfortable with technology driving them around, they’ll probably marvel at how unsafe the world was with human driven vehicles and wonder how the world's transport system managed to survive without computerised control.

Same as we wonder today how it would have been without modern medicine and facilities, air travel, mass communication and a billion other things.

Hell without computers they would never have been able to navigate their way to the moon and back.

If mankind is smart enough to build machines that can do that, I’m sure mankind will be smart enough to make driverless vehicles a fairly safe reality.

There is a long way to go and many steps to achieve as this technology is not even in it's infancy yet, it's hardly even a foetus.

The fact I like to drive myself will one day just be the raving words of an old foggy.