Out-Law News 1 min. read
17 Aug 2016, 4:22 pm
The vehicle it will produce will not have a steering wheel or accelerator or brake pedals and is "being specifically designed for commercial mobility services, such as ride sharing and ride hailing, and will be available in high volumes", Ford said.
Mark Fields, Ford president and chief executive, said: "The next decade will be defined by automation of the automobile, and we see autonomous vehicles as having as significant an impact on society as Ford’s moving assembly line did 100 years ago. We’re dedicated to putting on the road an autonomous vehicle that can improve safety and solve social and environmental challenges for millions of people – not just those who can afford luxury vehicles."
The company revealed the plans as it announced new partnerships with four start-up companies that it said will help it with its autonomous vehicle development.
Ford said it has invested in Silicon Valley-based light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors specialists Velodyne. It has also acquired Israel computer vision and machine learning company SAIPS to access technology that will "help Ford autonomous vehicles learn and adapt to the surroundings of their environment".
The car manufacturer said it has also taken out an exclusive licensing agreement with Nirenberg Neuroscience to "bring humanlike intelligence to the machine learning modules of its autonomous vehicle virtual driver system". It has separately invested in 3D mapping business Civil Maps with the aim of developing "high-resolution 3D maps of autonomous vehicle environments".
Ford said it plans to triple to approximately 30 the number of autonomous vehicles in its testing fleet this year, and then triple that number again in 2017. It said it also intends to expand its Silicon Valley operations to help support its smart mobility ambitions.
The announcement by Ford coincides with another development in the development of connected cars announced by German car manufacturer Audi. Audi said new 'vehicle-to-infrastructure' technology has already been deployed in some of its vehicles and allows messages to be relayed to drivers that traffic lights are due to turn green or that they will not make it through traffic lights before they turn red, according to a BBC report.
Future iterations of the technology could help vehicles to regulate their speed so as to flow through traffic lights and could be interlinked with navigational systems and stop and start functions deployed in those cars, Audi said, according to the report.
