Self-driving cars appear to be one step closer to the average Joe. Volvo aims to put consumers — not engineers or professional drivers — behind the wheel of a test fleet of self-driving XC90 SUVs in Sweden by 2017. Part of the automaker's "Drive Me" initiative, the project will deploy 100 autonomous cars on select roads near Volvo's headquarters in suburban Gothenburg, Sweden.
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The company already has several self-driving prototypes on the road around Gothenburg equipped with its Autopilot technology. It's hardly the first foray into self-driving vehicles, but Volvo research and development chief Peter Mertens called the consumer deployment the "world's first large-scale pilot" of its kind.
In an apparent dig at Mercedes' F 015 concept, Mertens noted that it's easy to "put living rooms on four wheels and pretend that this is the car interior, how it looks like in 10 years. It is much more complicated and much more real-life to really put the cars into the traffic."
The automaker said it has a "production-viable autonomous driving system" with an arsenal of 360-degree cameras, radars and sensors, including a windshield camera that reads traffic signs and other objects, and a separate camera that identifies road debris. Add to that GPS, 3-D mapping and automatic maneuvering and Volvo says its technology can drive the car without any driver supervision.
Not that you could nod off in the backseat or show up to the test drunk.
"We require the driver to be in the car, the driver to be in the seat, the driver to be sober, et cetera," technical specialist Erik Coelingh said. "But within this test, our ambition is to allow the driver to do something else. So when we do the technology design of the car, we do not assume that the driver can take over just immediately."
The automaker aims to equip the public test vehicles for use by a broad range of average Volvo customers on some 32 miles of public roads, albeit under highly controlled circumstances. Swedish authorities will clear the roads of oncoming traffic, for example, as well as cyclists and pedestrians during the tests. When drivers reach the end of a prescribed route (or if the weather is too foul) the car will alert them to take over. System failures will also prompt it to signal for you to take the wheel, but Volvo claims it has overlapping backups — for example, secondary braking and steering, or additional cameras in case one is washed out by sunlight. If the car prompts the driver to take over but gets no response, Volvo says it will find a safe place to stop.
Volvo says Drive Me aligns with its goal of zero deaths or serious injuries in a new Volvo by 2020. That could be more attainable than it seems, given certain versions of the old XC90 were among several cars the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety credited with zero U.S. driver deaths from 2009 to 2012.
Speaking of the U.S., Coelingh said Volvo's self-driving test fleets "will happen" stateside, though the timetable remains uncertain.
"If we are successful in Gothenburg within this limited scope, we will of course grow the scope," he said. "There's many people in the U.S. that could really benefit from a self-driving car, so that's on the plan. But we do not know when."
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