4
NEWS
Ford edging its way forward... autonomously
'Blueprint for Mobility' is car company's name for a new project to develop vehicles that can drive themselvesFord is collaborating with two American educational institutions in the development of new on-board technology to guide autonomous vehicles of the future.
Hinting at the complexity of developing commercially-available vehicles that operate autonomously, Ford's automated Fusion is being tweaked to predict the movements of other vehicles and pedestrians, with help from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And Stanford University is providing the autonomous Fords with the smarts to manoeuvre at low speeds and peer around obstacles.
The automated Fusion has been developed by Ford as a test bench for fully automated driving – and all the social, legislative and technological challenges that must be overcome first.
“To deliver on our vision for the future of mobility, we need to work with many new partners across the public and private sectors, and we need to start today,” said Paul Mascarenas, chief technical officer and Vice President, Ford research and innovation. “Working with university partners like MIT and Stanford enables us to address some of the longer-term challenges surrounding automated driving while exploring more near-term solutions for delivering an even safer and more efficient driving experience.”
Ford has also worked with the University of Michigan for the development of the experimental car's LiDAR sensors. The Fusion, which will be sold in Australia as the next-generation Mondeo, is quite close in specification to the production car, other than the four LiDAR sensors fitted. LiDAR is a system relying on laser light emitted and bouncing back to a receptor to determine the distance between the LiDAR unit on the car and another object within the vicinity. It operates on the same principle as radar, but with light playing the part of radio transmission. According to Ford, the four LiDAR sensors provide detailed data for the on-board system to build up a 3D map of the environment around the car.
“Our goal is to provide the vehicle with common sense,” said Greg Stevens, global manager for driver assistance and active safety, Ford research and innovation. “Drivers are good at using the cues around them to predict what will happen next, and they know that what you can’t see is often as important as what you can see. Our goal in working with MIT and Stanford is to bring a similar type of intuition to the vehicle.”
Read the latest news and reviews on your mobile, iPhone or PDA at carsales' mobile site...
Don't forget to register to comment on this article.
Share this article
Written byCarsales Staff
See all articlesOur team of independent expert car reviewers and journalistsMeet the team
Stay up to dateBecome a carsales member and get the latest news, reviews and advice straight to your inbox.
Subscribe todayRelated articles
Disclaimer
Please see our Editorial Guidelines & Code of Ethics (including for more information about sponsored content and paid events). The information published on this website is of a general nature only and doesn’t consider your particular circumstances or needs.
Please see our Editorial Guidelines & Code of Ethics (including for more information about sponsored content and paid events). The information published on this website is of a general nature only and doesn’t consider your particular circumstances or needs.
Contact
Advertise with us
Local marketplaces
International marketplaces
Scan to download the carsales app
Want more info? Here’s our app landing page
App Store and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Inc. Google Play and the Google Play logo
are trademarks of Google LLC.