Unmanned Ford drove along the road in pitch darkness

Recently, under the cover of night in near darkness experimental car Ford Fusion Hybrid with autonomous control did what practically impossible to make an inexperienced driver. With the lights off, he confidently swept through a difficult track at the test site Ford Arizona Proving Ground. As man does not see anything in this darkness, and the car camcorder were powerless. The machine has relied only on the lidar and firmware.

According to statistics, in the dark likelihood of a fatal accident is about three times higher than in the daytime. these statistics do not apply to autonomous vehicles. Thanks lidar machine nearly as effective in the dark, as well as during the day, said Jim McBride (Jim McBride), the technical director of the project. In other words, in the darkness an unmanned vehicle certainly safer than a machine with human-controlled.

Here is the lidar by car "Ford».



Of course, there is no magic. The car was not going blind, and on a pre-prepared 3D-map of the high-resolution area, which includes all the important information about the road, traffic signs, geography, topography and objects such as buildings and trees. The pulses of the lidar (2, 8 million laser pulses per second) are paving the way, as if probing the road with the orientation of 3D-map.

During the tests in Arizona in the car was the engineer who oversaw the work of the lidar and navigation system, wearing night vision goggles. Other engineers watched the car outside.



Another engineer was sitting in the back seat without glasses and tracked Ford Fusion movement on the computer screen. "Inside the car, I felt like it is moving, but when he looked out the window, he saw only darkness - says Wayne Williams, a member of the project. - In the back seat of the car, I saw the trajectory. Without a doubt, he was moving right on track
on these winding roads. »


The company "Ford" conducts research in the field of unmanned vehicles for over ten years and every effort is made to achieve absolutely complete autonomy in all situations. In other words, man can not participate in the management, in accordance with the specifications of SAE International Level 4.

This year the company has tripled the number of test cars are now about thirty Fusion Hybrid run-on Arizona roads, California and Michigan, where drones are allowed to ride.

Source: geektimes.ru/post/274224/