Ford Motor Company is on a mission to provide a fleet of fully-autonomous ride-sharing vehicles to the market by the year 2021. The next step in that process takes place when Ford unveils their next-generation Fusion Hybrid autonomous development vehicle for the first time at CES and the North American International Auto Show.
While it will still use the current autonomous vehicle’s platform, the new vehicle boasts increased processing power and additional computer hardware. The sensor technology has been revamped to improve both fit and placement, allowing the more compact tech to do a better job of detecting what’s around the vehicle while also looking more natural and elegant than before. Sleeker LiDAR sensors offer a more targeted field of vision, enabling the car to use two sensors to gather the same amount of data that previously required four.
Autonomous vehicles require the implementation of two major elements in their creation – a platform (basically, an upgraded version of the vehicle itself) and a virtual driver system. Each element has undergone an evolution in the new car, resulting in serious gains in both sensing and computing power.
This seems like a good time to explain what a virtual driver system is. Plain and simple, it is comprised of the elements needed to enable the vehicle to perform the same tasks that a human driver would. The Ford virtual driver system includes sensors, extremely detailed 3D maps, algorithms, machine learning and computer vision and the computational power needed to make it all work.At this time, there is a total of 10 Ford Fusion hybrids that are equipped with the first-generation autonomous technology; with the introduction of the second-generation vehicle, the company will triple the size of the fleet .
Contact Liberty Ford to learn more about Ford’s goal to create a fully-autonomous autonomous ride-sharing fleet by 2021.