At a special event in Detroit, Ford presented to the public car modification Fusion Hybrid, designed to test a new system of automatic driving.

Homing version of Fusion Hybrid looks like a regular Fusion Hybrid 2014 issue, if not look at the roof. That’s where the system is installed Lidar and several 360-degree rotating camera. In Ford believe that with their help, the car can get the most detailed topographical and visual representation of the environment.

Tandem of four devices cylindrical shape under the force output maximum detailed image in real time, allowing the car to distinguish moving (frightened animals, pedestrians and moving cars) and nedvizhuschiesya (alleys, congresses and benches) objects.

Collected information and its processing algorithms developed by researchers at Michigan State University, will help the car regardless of the mode of transportation to eliminate the possibility of traffic accidents.

During the event, Ford’s vice president of product development at Raj Nair stressed that the experimental vehicle is not self-controlled car and will only be used to test new “modern driver assistance systems.” For example, self-parking systems or automatic bypass obstacles.

Of course, Ford plans to look not so ambitious as Google’s plans or Volvo , which plans to release its self-managed road cars robots. However, Ford is by nature is not as aggressive as Google and always occupied a middle ground between the desire to innovate at a speed of technological and characteristic for the automotive industry in Detroit conservatism.

Nevertheless, the issue of self-car company Ford is to be commended, as together with other automakers and the National Road Safety (NHTSA) is working on the implementation of the concept to include all vehicles in a single network. The idea is that all the cars do not just have to interact with the environment through cameras and data processing algorithms, but also to communicate with each other with a view to joint movement coordination. If cars can synchronize and communicate with each other, the need for a system Lidar, which can advance to see an obstacle in the form of moving towards the car disappear. Implementation of this concept will also be able to solve other problems. For example, to save fuel and avoid traffic jams.

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As part of the conference RoboBusiness, dedicated to the issues of Robotics, director of self-cars in Google Chris Urmson (Chris Urmson) shared some information about the safety of robotic vehicles.

Based on the data collected during the operation of self-Lexus vehicles and Prius, Chris Urmson said cars are run better than humans do. In particular, he noted that the automation is driving more smoothly and more securely than the trained professional drivers. Previously, Chris Urmson has already reported that in the self-administered test vehicles covered 482.7 thousand miles without a single accident. The new data show that in the process of driving more people are sharply accelerator and brake, than it does when the car is fully controlled automatically. In addition, robotic vehicles are better maintained a safe distance between other cars.

It is further noted that during the entire testing self-managed Google cars only 2 times become parties to the accident: in 2010 and in 2011. In both cases, there was a collision with a car at the rear. In this case, the two incidents were the fault of the drivers.

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