Excerpt from Automotive News Europe.
As self-driving cars become increasingly competent and plausible, Volvo have unveiled an ambitious plan to take a leadership role in commercialising the technology.
Volvo R&D chief Peter Mertens recently talked with to Automotive News Europe.
“Volvo want to continue to be in the lead of autonomous driving, by investing a lot of money, like in our ‘Drive Me’ program. We’ve started testing what will become 100 completely self-driving cars on roads in and around Gothenburg, Sweden. I want to test real cars in real traffic, with real customers. We will collect miles of experience in real traffic. We can use that to learn and make the algorithm more robust, make it detect situations better than before and get feedback from customers.
“We’ve introduced City Safety in all our cars, and statistics show that rear crashes [caused by Volvo vehicles] have been reduced by 30 percent. Insurance premiums are lower, too. It’s an automatic braking technology that recognizes when you get too close to the car in front of you and at low speeds brakes for you.”
“The new XC90’s traffic-jam assist is the next big step for self-driving cars at Volvo. It helps you follow the car in front of you and make latitudinal and longitudinal moves. It is completely self-driven during a traffic jam. But since it is impossible now to completely monitor the whole world around you, the driver needs to be in the loop. If something unexpected in the system happens, the driver will naturally take over.”
“The biggest step for self-driving cars, is making the system more intelligent. We look at technology and say 90 percent of accidents are caused by human error. It would be fantastic if a system could learn from you about what you have done to prevent an accident. That will be the breakthrough for the technology, when we are able to learn from experience. Right now, there is no computer or sensor that can model the world. And we humans can’t either. We learn from experience. Let the system learn from your experience.”
