Regarding autonomous cars, Ford seems to be more reserved than the rest of the automakers and technology companies. Mark Fields, Ford CEO recently announced that the company will increase its fleet of test cars 10-30 this year, allowing Ford to take less time to gather information necessary for the company to be able to make autonomous car at the end to be sold to consumers.
Ford does not put a time for them to present their version of autonomous cars. However, the fields promised that when they do, it will be safe and accessible to everyone and not just for people who can afford luxury cars.
aligned with this objective, the company launched the Ford Smart Mobility program in which one of the elements is autonomous driving. The company sends a message to the public that they are being transformed from just a car manufacturer to a company that provides both automotive and mobility customers.
There are certainly challenges the company faces in terms of self-development of the cars. First, there are many variables they need to cover and when they think they have covered the baseline, there are more variables come to the surface that has not been addressed. One example is the weather.
cameras, sonars and sensors are essential for autonomous cars. However, they have difficulties operating in freezing rain or snow or even adverse conditions. Therefore, to resolve this issue, Ford experimented with lidar sensors and cameras, sonars and sensors. It seems that it is unnecessary to use lidar sensors with cameras, sonars and sensors such as LIDAR should be able to cover all of it. However, according to the fields, lidar sensors with cameras, sonar sensors and provide a complete picture of things, so it is not redundant.
Fields predicted that fully autonomous vehicles will be first available in places that were mapped 3-D then it will be evolved into something like a shuttle service, a kind of passenger car sharing service.
Ford vehicles already have the capacity to keep the driveway or park automatically if the parallel or perpendicular parking as well as automatic braking. Despite all this, there is also another team dedicated to delivering a fully autonomous vehicle. However, in the short term, Ford vehicles will be equipped with semi-autonomous devices.
Despite the technical question, it is also issue regulations that had to be resolved before a fully autonomous vehicle can be launched to the public. One of the examples given by Fields is stopped to four lanes. The current rule says that whoever gets there first and stops can go, however, people do not always follow the rule. Therefore, Ford should be able to find a way for its fully autonomous car to handle such a scenario.
0 Komentar