By 2021, Ford hopes to build a fleet of fully autonomous cars without steering wheels, brake pedals or any other way for a human to take control of the vehicle. At the firm's headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan, WIRED took a drive in one of Ford's autonomous research vehicles to find out how its driverless cars match up to the likes of Tesla and Google.
Being driven in a driverless car, it turns out, is a lot like taking a ride with an elderly relative behind the wheel. As the Ford Fusion hybrid vehicle navigated the semi-public roads of Ford’s campus it was a model cautious driver, letting other cars take the lead and waiting for a crossing signal to stop flashing even though the pedestrian had long-since finished crossing the road.
The autonomous vehicle handled a variety of normal urban driving situations, such as four-way intersections, left turns and pedestrian crossings with apparent ease. Ford engineer Ghassan Atmeh – who did have to take control from the car once in its 1.5 mile long journey – told WIRED that when in doubt, the car was programmed to drive conservatively. "If someone else has taken the right of way for themselves, it'll stop and let them go," he said.
The most remarkable thing about the drive was how ordinary it all felt. Before stepping into the car I looked it in the eye (well, headlights), trying to intimidate the hulk of steel and plastic into being extra careful with my life. I needn't have worried. The drive was controlled, smooth and – in the nicest way possible – completely forgettable.
The engineering that goes into these cars, though, is anything but ordinary. Each vehicle in Ford’s fleet, currently numbering just 10, is equipped with four LiDAR sensors that bounce light off the car’s surroundings to build a 3D map tracking the movement of objects within an 80-metre radius. Each LiDAR sensor scans 750,000 points of detail every second and feeds that data to the car’s central computer, which then makes a driving decision based on how those observed objects are moving.
"LiDAR is essential because it's only with an active sensor like a LiDAR that you can get the kind of distancing you need, so you can predict and detect an object's motion," Ford's vice president of research and advanced engineering, Ken Washington, told WIRED.
LiDAR, which is also used by Google in its own driverless cars, is central to Ford's autonomous ambitions. In August the company teamed up with Baidu to invest $150 million in Velodyne, a startup that manufactures LiDAR sensors. "Our next generation of LiDARs will more than double their sensing distance," said Washington, bringing their range to more than 160 metres.
The cars also use a combination of other sensing techniques to build a picture of their surroundings. Six onboard cameras detect the colour of road signs and traffic lights while radar sensors, which Tesla also uses in its own semi-autonomous vehicles, map out other vehicles on the road.
Unlike Tesla, however, Ford isn't planning to put this technology in its commercially available cars just yet – its goal is to build a fleet of driverless ride-sharing vehicles by 2021.
"Cars have a really large radar fingerprint, and radar is really great for identifying and detecting vehicles," said Washington.
Ford dipped its toe into ride-sharing earlier in September when it acquired Chariot – a San Francisco-based startup that lets users share minivans across the city. Washington said that although the huge cost of driverless cars made them unappealing to own, cutting out the cost of human taxi drivers will make driverless ride-sharing a cheap way for people to travel.
"Our goal is to enable there not to be a driver," he said, clarifying that the technology will initially be geofenced to an as-yet undecided North American city.
This brings the century-old company right into the path of Uber, which is poised to start testing a fleet of driverless Volvo XC90s in Pittsburgh. CEO Travis Kalanick has long-stated his commitment to turning Uber driverless, although that may well mean delivering another blow to the taxi industry in many of the world’s cities.
While Apple, Google, Uber and most major car manufacturers are racing to develop their own driverless cars, Ford is taking a more measured approach.
"We're not so concerned about being first," said Washington. "We're not about making noise, we're about making good solid technology, and being safe and being trusted." Just like its driverless cars, Ford is going to take this journey nice and slowly.
Back on the test track a passerby – the only one we'd seen so far that didn't seem to be following a neatly choreographed walking script from Ford – wandered down the road in front of our test vehicle. The car automatically slowed down, matching the speed of the pedestrian, but didn’t make any move to pass him despite both lanes ahead being completely clear of traffic.
"Ghas is going to take over," the engineer in the passenger seat said as his colleague took the wheel, disengaging the autonomous driving. "This is really out of scope for our mission here. This is not part of the plan." Looks like Ford isn’t ready to get rid of that steering wheel just yet.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
