Google and Uber are all betting on self-driving technology. As one of the oldest car manufacturers, Ford has not been left behind. It has quietly developed a fleet of 30 fully self-driving cars; with this At the same time, due to frequent Tesla self-driving car accidents, the controversy over the safety of self-driving cars has not stopped.
To what extent has autonomous driving technology matured? And what is it like to have a machine—not a human—drive the car? We came to Ford’s headquarters, got in their driverless car, and walked around the headquarters campus.
About 10 miles west of Detroit is Dearborn, where Ford is headquartered. Entering one of the ordinary-looking parks, you can see a white Ford Fusion (Mondeo) parked on the road. There are four cylindrical things standing on the roof, implying that it is not an ordinary car.
“Autonomous cars!” The people around me shouted excitedly.
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At this time, several similarly modified white Fusions drove past us. They all have funny four "corners" on their heads, which are expensive radars and lidars, and external infrared sensors, cameras, and computers are all hidden in the car body that is not easy to find.
Ford’s self-driving cars are being tested here. Although it is a park, it is not a closed, manually cleared road, but a corner of the real world: it has a speed limit of 25 miles (40 kilometers) per hour, intersections, traffic lights, slopes, and stop signs. (stop sign), pedestrians, oncoming traffic, just like a normal suburb.
The person sitting behind the steering wheel is not the driver, but the "passenger"
I got into a self-driving car, and there were already two passengers in it-one of them was sitting in the car. In the driver's seat. In a self-driving car, the driver's seat is occupied by a "safety officer" who will not touch the steering wheel, nor the accelerator and brake, but is only responsible for taking over in emergencies; and in the passenger seat, there is a person holding a computer. Engineer, he monitors the operation of the system, collects data, and tells us what information this colorful and ever-changing screen is conveying.