Gothenburg, Sweden - Volvo has completed designs for self-driving cars which it plans to put on the road in two years.
“We have designed a complete, production-viable autonomous driving system,” said Peter Merten, Volvo’s head of research and development. “The key to making this leap is a complex network of sensors, cloud-based positioning systems and intelligent braking and steering technologies.”
Volvo is locked in a race with Japanese competitor Nissan and internet giant Google to be the first to put fully automated cars into circulation.
“Autonomous cars will fundamentally change the way we look at driving,” said Mertens, calling the venture “uncharted territory” and underlining the challenges of meeting strict safety requirements.
BACKUP SYSTEMS
He said Volvo had developed an “autopilot” with backup systems that would continue to function safely even if certain parts stopped working; he also claimed that the new car would react “faster than most humans” in an emergency.
Volvo technical specialist Erik Coelingh said: “Making this complex system 99 percent reliable is not good enough. You need to get much closer to 100 percent before you can let self-driving cars mix with other road users in real-life traffic.
Volvo plans to put 100 self-driving cars on roads around its home town of Gothenburg in 2017 in a pilot initiative with Sweden's transport authority and local government.
AFP