What if I told you that they aren't testing a drone car but the life-naut and its capability to drive a drone? (id you really thought that Google -maps was meant for you to walk through the world virtually?)

The self-driving cars using ROBOTS to test for safety and navigate pedestrians and traffic

  • Ford vans fitted with robotic controls that can steer the vehicle, change gear and brake when faced with a hazard
  • Cameras and built-in sensors scan for obstacles while GPS trackers monitor its position
  • Robotic vans can repeatedly drive courses designed to subject the van to 10 years of wear and tear – humans are limited to once a day
  • All data is fed back to engineers in a central control room in Michigan

Ford has designed a range of robot-driven cars to test for safety – just weeks after its chairman announced that self-driving vehicles are closer than we think.

The robots can accelerate, steer and even stop for passing pedestrians or other obstacles due to a series of built-in cameras, sensors and GPS trackers.

They are also able to carry out more rigorous tests than humans and and put the vans through the equivalent of 10 years of wear and tear in a single sitting driving on specially-designed courses – humans are only allowed to drive these rough courses once a day. 

The inside of Ford's automated robot van. The car maker is the first manufacturer to use robots to test drive vehicle durability.Ford’s automated robot van. Ford is the first car maker to test drive vehicles using robots. Engineers worked with Autonomous Solutions to build the robots capable of subjecting vans to up to 10 years wear and tear in a single sitting. Humans are only allowed to carry out the rigorous tests once a day

THE RISE OF SELF-DRIVING CARS

Google officially launched its range of Self-Driving Cars in 2010, however the company was not given a licence to test the technology on roads until May last year.

Idealab’s founder Bill Gross tweeted a picture of what Google’s self-driving cars see when it makes a left turn in May.

It showed the car’s 360-degree field of view and bore a striking resemblance to the view the Terminator sees in the classic sci-fi films.

The cars can analyse the road ahead, watch out for hazards, speed up and slow down without any human input.

In March 2012, Google tested just how autonomous their self-driving cars were by getting a blind people to drive the vehicle.

Steve Mahan is 95 cent blind. 

He successfully drove the self-driving car to buy a taco and pick up dry cleaning around Morgan Hill in California. 

A Google employee sat with Mr Mahan in the Toyota Prius but didn’t help him drive. 

At the end of the journey, he tells his passengers: ‘You guys get out, I’ve got places I have to go.’ 

Ford is the first car maker to develop robotic technology capable of driving vehicles on the company’s high-impact on-and off-road testing sites.

It claims that the robots are ideal for the job because they are well suited for durability test conditions that would prove too taxing for human drivers.

The new technology was most recently used to test Ford’s new full-size Transit van due to launch in 2014.

 

The testing is carried out at the company’s Proving Grounds in Romeo, Michigan, U.S.

The durability technology includes a robotic module installed to the test vehicle that controls steering, acceleration and braking.

The module is set to follow a pre-programmed course and the vehicle’s position is tracked using cameras in a central control room, as well as GPS trackers designed to be accurate to one inch.

If the vehicle strays from this programmed course engineers can correct the van’s route and restart the test.

Onboard sensors can also make the vehicle carry out an emergency stop if a pedestrian or another vehicle strays into the path.

The robotically-driven vehicles are repeatedly put through rigorous tests on Ford tracks that have been nicknamed Silver Creek, Power Hop Hill and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

The different surfaces on these tracks deliberately include broken concrete, cobblestones, metal grates, rough gravel, mud pits and oversized speed bumps.

The durability technology fitted to Ford vans includes a robotic control module that controls steering, acceleration and braking.The robotic Ford vans are fitted with a module that controls steering, acceleration and braking. It is set to follow a pre-programmed course and the vehicle is tracked using cameras in a central control room, pictured. If the vehicle strays off course, engineers can correct the van’s route and restart the test

By making the robots drive these courses repeatedly the engineers can subject the vehicles to up to the equivalent of 10 years of daily driving abuse in just a single sitting. 

All North American Ford trucks must pass these durability tests before they’re are certified for customer use.

Dave Payne, Manager of Vehicle Development Operations at Ford, said: ‘Some of the tests we do on our commercial trucks for North America are so strenuous that we limit the exposure time for human drivers.

‘The challenge is completing testing to meet vehicle development time lines while keeping our drivers comfortable.

‘Robotic testing allows us to do both. We accelerate durability testing while simultaneously increasing the productivity of our other programs by redeploying drivers to those areas, such as noise level and vehicle dynamics testing.

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