Even before one of the world’s first test tracks dedicated to autonomous and connected vehicle technology officially opened in July 2015, Ford already had a car cruising around the 32-acre facility collecting data. Now Ford is laying claim to being the first automaker to test a fully autonomous prototype on the track.
The Mcity test track in Ann Arbor, Mich. is operated by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute in partnership with a consortium of 15 automakers, suppliers, insurance companies and government agencies. The track is designed to provide the partner companies with a venue for testing self-driving and connected vehicles in a variety of environments and road conditions that simulate the real world. It features reconfigurable buildings, traffic signals, overpasses and other obstacles that a car will navigate while maneuvering through a typical city.
An autonomous Ford Fusion prototype driving around the Mcity test track (video credit: Ford Motor Company)
Perhaps the most important aspect of Mcity is its location in southeast Michigan. While its geographic proximity to the heart of the American auto industry helps, it’s also subject to all the weather vagaries this region experiences during the course of the year. So far, the bulk of the autonomous driving development we’ve heard about has been happening out in Silicon Valley where they don’t have to deal with snow and only infrequently with rain.
The view of Mcity as seen by the sensors on a self-driving Ford Fusion (video credit: Ford Motor Company)
Since the sensor arrays on autonomous vehicles will eventually have to understand how to navigate snow covered roads with no visible markings as well as maneuver in white-outs or heavy rain, having a facility where that can be experienced is important. As a shared facility, the partner companies will also be able test the interoperability of their systems to verify that there is no interference.
Ford hasn’t been particularly prominent in the autonomous vehicle space over the past decade despite testing the technology for at least that long. Unlike GM and Volkswagen, Ford didn’t participate While Ford did participate in the DARPA Grand Challenge program that spawned so many of the engineers and researchers that have gone on to work at Google and other companies, it wasn't as successful in the final rankings as Volkswagen and GM. Ford partnered with Honeywell and Delphi for the Intelligent Vehicle Systems Technology team while VW partnered with Stanford University and GM worked with Carnegie Mellon.
In fact, former CEO Alan Mulally regularly said publicly that he didn’t think most people would be ready for autonomous vehicles based on the technology available at the time because they liked to drive and preferred to stay involved. As a result, Ford focused on bringing driver assist technologies to the mass market in cars like the Fusion. Nonetheless, in mid-2013 as Google was getting all the attention for moving the technology forward, Ford publicly unveiled its fleet of self-driving Fusion prototypes.
Earlier this year even as crews were finishing up construction of Mcity, Ford engineers were driving a car around the track, creating a detailed 3D digital map. Since the opening, those LIDAR and radar-equipped Fusions have been making their way around the roads without human intervention as the engineers work on refining the control algorithms.
When asked if the Fusions have run in inclement weather yet, Ford technology spokesman Alan Hall said “not yet, stay tuned.” The leaves have now largely dropped from the trees here in Michigan and the first snow flakes should hit in the coming weeks. Hopefully we’ll soon learn more about whether those algorithms can handle slippery roads any better than the drivers that seem to treat the first snowfall of the year as if they’ve never seen such a thing before.
While Ford may have been the first of the companies to put its self-driving technology to the test at Mcity, it certainly hasn’t been the only user of the track. While Nissan, Toyota, GM and Delphi haven’t yet responded to requests for comment, Honda senior technical leader Jim Keller told Forbes that his team has use the facility extensively for testing vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-external communications systems.
Honda V2X communications (video credit: Honda Motor Company)
Update: GM spokesman Dan Flores confirmed GM has so far relied on Mcity for interoperability testing of V2X communications to ensure its systems work properly with other manufacturers. GM is the first OEM to announce production plans for V2V which will be available in 2016 on the Cadillac CTS.
The age of vehicles that go, stop and steer themselves is coming, but there is still a lot of engineering work to do and a lot of lessons to learn before that time. Mcity and other facilities will play a critical part in validating of that work before those cars are let loose.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2015/11/13/ford-lays-claim-to-being-first-to-use-michigan-autonomous-test-track/
2015-11-13T05:01:00+00:00