Self-driving vehicles to hit road in Sweden
Customers to test cars for Volvo in 2017 pilot
Volvo made its self-driving ambitions clear Thursday with the announcement of a pilot program that will put 100 autonomous cars on Swedish roads by 2017.
The program is unique in that it hands the keys to customers rather than company engineers. The test subjects will be able to operate the cars autonomously on select roads around Volvo’s hometown of Gothenburg.
“We are entering uncharted territory in the field of autonomous driving,” said Peter Mertens, senior vice president of research and development. “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.”
Volvo touts the program as a unique collaboration with the Swedish government, the city of Gothenburg and the Lindholmen Science Park. Roughly 30 miles of highways in the city have been approved for the cars, which will be allowed to operate only in conditions when no oncoming traffic, pedestrians or cyclists are present.
A variety of drivers who use the preapproved route regularly will be chosen for the pilot program.
Volvo will equip 100 of its new XC90 crossovers with a laundry list of sensors, radars, cameras and lasers that will give the vehicle a 360-degree view of what’s happening on the road.
These systems will gather data about the roads and conditions around them in real time and will use GPS to compare the vehicle’s surroundings to an existing 3-D map.
Once the cars reach the end of the approved autonomous zone, they will prompt the driver to resume control. If the driver cannot, the car will find a safe place to stop. Fail-safe measures include a secondary – and completely independent – braking system.
The automaker wanted to develop a real-world program to gather data on how self-driving cars operate on public roads, and what effect they could have on fuel consumption, safety, traffic and urban planning. It’s another step toward Volvo’s stated goal that no humans would be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo by 2020.