Self-driving Volvos in Sweden
Self-driving Volvos are hitting the streets of Sweden. The test drives are part of Volvo Car Group’s “Drive Me” project which aims to have 100 of the self-driving cars on the road by 2017.
Gothenburg, Sweden’s second largest city, already has some of these cars traveling the streets. By just pushing a button on the steering wheel, the car’s acceleration, braking and steering is automatically controlled. The cars use radar, cameras to analyze traffic and GPS to get the latest map data.
The prototypes being tested are still accompanied by a driver to supervise and ensure that the driving is safe, but Volvo hopes that the cars will allow passengers to focus on other tasks while commuting.
Erik Coelingh, Volvo’s technical expert for activity safety braking, accelerating and steering, said, “Our intention is that in the final product a driver can actually release the steering wheel without having to supervise so that he or she can do something else with their time.”
He also believes that automated driving will decrease the amount of accidents and help make traffic safer to drive in. “We do analysis on traffic safety. We know from this analysis that almost all collisions that occur are caused by human error,” Coelingh said. “If you automate driving, you take away the causes of many accidents and you can make traffic safer.
Volvo isn’t alone with this technology. Google has also been developing self-driving cars, and has reportedly been test driving the cars around Mountain View, Calif. where the company’s headquarters are located.
Gothenburg has a population of 500,000 people, and Volvo plans to drive the 100 cars everyday on approximately 30 miles through the city.
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