Volvo has been extremely busy on the autonomous driving front in recent weeks with major announcements about partnerships with Uber and Autoliv . This week the Chinese-owned, Swedish automaker has rolled out the first of a fleet of partially autonomous XC90 SUVs that will hit the streets of Gothenburg, Sweden in early 2017.
In early 2015, Volvo announced the Drive Me test program which was planned to be the first public test autonomous driving technology with regular consumers. A fleet of 100 XC90s capable of fully autonomous operation under certain conditions will be loaned to Swedish drivers so the company can collect data on how the vehicles work in the real world and how human operators and other vehicles interact with these new machines.
Volvo cars senior technical leader Erik Coelingh describes the modifications to the remarkably normal looking SUV in the video. Forward facing radar and camera sensors are mounted behind the windshield with another camera in the grille. A single LIDAR sensor sits below the front bumper. Each of the rear view mirrors has two more cameras, one looking down for lane markings and road edges with the other looking back at other vehicles. The computer system processing all of this resides below the floor in the rear cargo area.
The Drive Me program cars are actually somewhat less capable than what is being built for Uber development program. The more limited sensor array used on these vehicles means that they are more capable than so-called level 2 driver assist systems like Tesla's Auto Pilot and Volvo's own Pilot Assist but the vehicle cannot drive itself under all conditions.
When running on certain geo-fenced roads in the Gothenburg area, the human operators will be able to go completely hands and feet off the controls. However, once the XC90 leaves these pre-defined roads the human operator will have to take over again, making this effectively a level 3 autonomous vehicle.
Volvo has included sensors inside the cabin to monitor the person sitting behind the wheel. This monitoring system is also being used by Volvo to help learn how people use these vehicles and what they do during the autonomous operating time as well as to make sure that they are ready to take over when the system hands back control.
Another important aspect of the Drive Me program is the fact that these vehicles will operating in all sorts of weather conditions including snow and rain. This is something that most other automakers and developers of autonomous systems have largely avoided so far by limiting testing to Silicon Valley. Expanding the use of this technology to other locations will be critical to ensuring that it is ready for a broader deployment in the early 2020s.
After launching the Drive Me test in Gothenburg, Volvo will add at least two more fleets of similar XC90s in the UK and China. Hopefully, this sort of controlled roll-out will give Volvo the sort of data that it needs to evolve its autonomous driving capabilities with much lower risk of harm to customers than Tesla's approach of selling a beta-level Auto Pilot system.
The author is a senior analyst on the Transportation Efficiencies team at Navigant Research
https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2016/09/09/volvo-completes-first-autonomous-xc90-for-2017-public-driveme-test-program/
2016-09-09T13:24:00+00:00