Ford announced today at CES 2016 that it’s moving all in on autonomous vehicle research, looking ahead to the roads of the future.
America’s top automaker is tripling the size of its Autonomous Vehicle Development Fleet. Ford’s high-tech research fleet is made up entirely of Fusion Hybrids and it’s the largest fully autonomous vehicle assemblage in the automotive business. The added fleet vehicles will use Velodyne’s advanced auto sensors, providing accurate mapping and creating accurate, real-time 3D models of the surrounding environment.
Whether we’re talking about Ford, Audi or any other automaker pushing into the autonomous car field, the big question remains if we’ll ever see such vehicles populating the roadways. For its part, Ford has always been sincerely invested in futurist theory and researching both smart city’s and intelligent cars. I’m sure Ford means what’s saying and dong with this further investment into self-driving vehicles.
Also: CES 2016: Acton Pointing the Way for Personal Mobility
I stick with the camp of automotive industry analyzers looking at the enormous legal risk of allowing self-driving cars out of the shop. We won’t be seeing this technology spreading wide anytime soon. But, that’s OK. CES is about the future.
While the self-driving cars multiplying at Ford, the automaker is teaming up with camera drone specialists DJI – announcing a developer challenge to create smart drone-to-car software.
The call for the brightest and best is designed to bring forth a “rapidly deployable surveying system for use by the United Nations in emergency zones.” When it all comes together, drivers will be able to control drones from Ford F-150s for agriculture, forestry, construction, bridge inspection and other work. Ford doesn’t include military uses in “other work,” but we know the world we live in these days.
