Volvo is close to putting driverless cars into the hands of real consumers.
The brand’s ‘Drive Me’ program aims to put 100 XC90 SUVs with driverless technology in the hands of customers in Gothenburg, Sweden during 2017.
Volvo says it has built a “production-viable autonomous driving system,” that will be able to handle even the most complex traffic scenarios. Initially, the vehicles will only be able to operate fully autonomously on a select 31-mile piece of motorway chosen by Volvo because it has no oncoming traffic, cyclists or pedestrians.
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Unlike other company’s driverless car testing, Volvo says that the drivers in its vehicles will not have to stay alert to the road ahead and can focus their time on other activities. This is also the first time that members of the public will have access to fully autonomous vehicles. “Taking the exciting step to a public pilot, with the ambition to enable ordinary people to sit behind the wheel in normal traffic on public roads, has never been done before,” said Dr Peter Mertens, Senior Vice President of Research and Development at Volvo.
A combination of laser scanners, senors, sonar and cameras make it possible for the autonomous Volvo to have a 360-degree view around itself. Connection to GPS allows the car to receive up-to-date traffic info while a cloud-based vehicle-to-vehicle positioning system will show the position of lane markers along with posts and other hard objects to the car.
Safety is one of the largest priorities for Volvo when it comes to driverless cars, so many emergency systems have been put in place. For example, a driver prompt will sound if the system needs human intervention, but if the driver doesn’t take over in time, the car will bring itself to a stop in a place it deems safe.
“Making this complex system 99 per cent reliable is not good enough. You need to get much closer to 100 per cent before you can let self-driving cars mix with other road users in real-life traffic,” says Erik Coelingh,Technical Specialist at Volvo Cars. “Here, we have a similar approach to that of the aircraft industry. Our fail-operational architecture includes backup systems that will ensure that Autopilot will continue to function safely also if an element of the system were to become disabled.”
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Volvo designed backup systems to make sure that even if one of the autonomous controls cuts out, the car will still be able to drive itself, as the company acknowledges that the driver will likely not be ready to take over in an emergency situation.
“Once the public pilot is up and running, it will provide us with valuable knowledge about implementing self-driving cars in the traffic environment, and help us explore how they can contribute to sustainable mobility,” said Coelingh.
Exactly how Volvo will choose the 100 customers is still unknown, although they will have to live or work along the 31-mile route.
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