Ford to begin testing autonomous cars in California in 2016

Ford to begin testing autonomous cars in California in 2016
If you live in Palo Alto, watch out if you’re on foot: There’s an increasingly good chance an approaching car may not have a human behind the wheel.

If you live in Palo Alto, watch out if you’re on foot: There’s an increasingly good chance an approaching car may not have a human behind the wheel. (Maybe that’s a good thing, the way some people drive.) Ford has announced it will begin testing fully autonomous versions of its Ford Fusion Hybrid on California’s public roads next year.

The car in question is dubbed the Automated Fusion Hybrid Research Vehicle, which Ford debuted in December 2013. It contains four spinning Lidar-based detectors on the roof that measure distance from objects by firing lasers and processing the reflected light, along with an omnidirectional spherical camera. I attended the unveiling in Detroitat the time, and watched as the car drove itself onto the stage (now a party trick that’s decidedly old hat).

A Ford employee testing radar- and camera-assisted autonomous driving. (Credit: Ford)

Once on the road, the car will build Lidar-based three-dimensional maps and then navigate based on them, while also processing any real-time changes to the environment.

The announcement signals Ford will be joining Google, Tesla, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz, and others in rolling out small numbers of autonomous vehicles for testing in Palo Alto. In 2014, the state of California began issuing permits to automakers and parts manufacturers like Bosch for testing autonomous vehicles; so far, 11 are participating.

Ford has already begun testing self-driving cars at the University of Michigan’s Hollywood-set-style Mcity, the world’s first controlled environment designed specifically for testing automated vehicles. Mcity includes fake real-world details like graffiti-covered road signs and worn-off lane markings to better simulate what cars would encounter on actual roads. But the streets of Palo Alto, with real pedestrians instead of cardboard cutouts, are obviously a serious step forward.

Ford’s aDRIVE app (pictured) lets employees go on virtual test drives with autonomous cars and pedestrian-filled streets. (Credit: Ford)

Ford believe it’s ready. It has been pushing its in-car tech and autonomous driving research heavily lately. A couple of years ago, I had a chance to test drive the Ford Fusion Energi plug-in hybrid, back when the idea of boosting hybrid efficiency with a plug-in system was still relatively new. Earlier this year, it rolled out Ford Sync 3, a huge QNX-based upgrade over the sluggish, buggy Microsoft-powered infotainment systems it has been incorporating in its passenger cars and light trucks for years.

This month, Ford retrofitted Siri Eyes Free compatibilityto five million existing vehicles with a firmware update. The company has also been racing to add crash avoidance, self-parking, and lane assist tech to its lower-end vehicles. In addition, Ford’s Research and Innovation Center Palo Alto has done work on autonomous vehicle “virtual” test drives, sensor development for road signs and pedestrians, camera sensor development, and data-driven health care for GPS- and digital mapping-based distribution of vaccines in rural Africa.