The Ford keynote on Tuesday at the Consumer Electronics Show expanded on key points in the Ford Smart Mobility plan to take the automaker to the next level in many areas which ultimately put the Ford company at the forefront of connectivity and technology. One of those key pieces was Ford advances in autonomous vehicle development thanks to radar technology. If you’ve ever wondered how do Ford autonomous vehicles work, keep reading for a breakdown of a few new technologies highlighted at CES.
Read More: Ford Plans to Connect Homes and Cars with Voice Commands
The two key pieces in creating a vehicle that can safety drive itself (and so as well, or better than a human driver in real-world conditions) is sensing and computer processing.
LiDAR Sensing Technology on New Ford Autonomous Vehicles
The PUCK can fit in the mirrors of each Ford Fusion Hybrid testing vehicle and offer plenty of information about other vehicles and road conditions. While the Solid-State Hybrid Ultra PUCK Auto sensors are a new breakthrough, Ford has been using LiDAR technology from Velodyne since the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) autonomous vehicle challenges in 2005. In those challenges, Ford used a Ford Super Duty F-250 as the base for its autonomous vehicle entry.
Read More: Driver Assist Features on Ford Vehicles
After you have the ability to sense the world, allowing a car to safely navigate through it becomes a question of breaking down safe driving into algorithms a computer can understand and act on. Every advance in radar sensing technology that we see on the new vehicles here at Akins Ford (like autonomous cruise control or parking assist) is a step closer to a fully autonomous vehicle.
Ford is hoping to have a fully autonomous vehicle on the road by 2020.
