Flashback to the bold statement by Volvo: Our cars would never crash

09/19/2018

The race to the perfect self-driving car was heated up with the bold announcement from Volvo. Let's see what they have been doing so far to keep their big words.

For those who miss it, Lex Kerssemakers, the CEO of the Volvo America, made a bold statement about the quality of their self-driving car, that the engineers from Sweden are the men of their words, and they assured their more-than-90 percent fail-safe vehicle will be rolled out to the market in 2 years time, 2020. In today's market, especially given the destiny for the Volvo is still in the fog since the diesel transmission scandal, any statements that contain the word " percent " that is greater than 90 would certainly draw some eyes. Volvo said they can do that by constantly measuring the number of deaths in their vehicle and use the data to improve its AI system (Artificial intelligence).

Volvo's safety features

Volvo promise occupants can rely 100 percent on their safety features

That might be not enough to convince the audience and pull their value shares upward because their technology is not particularly ground-breaking, compared to other brands. Technologies such as the collision-avoidance, blind spot detectors that are placed where the drivers cannot visually see, the cruise control that automatically reduces the pace of the car by calculating the distance between vehicles, and the camera and sensors system to tell the driver if they have veered off their lanes, all of which were developed, partly or fully by other brands a long time ago.

And clearly, Volvo still has a long way to go as one of their autonomous car provided for Uber fleet has killed a pedestrian in Tempe, US earlier this year.

Volvo Cars: Explore The User-Interface Of Tomorrow

Anyway, Volvo has a year ahead to perfect the safety features on their self-driving vehicles. For now, let's look through the technologies that Volvo are working on to realize their promise.

1. Adaptive cruise control

This technology is prevalent in a Volvo and other autonomous vehicles as well. It uses a set of radar and sensors to "feel" the vehicles around. The technology is still in its infancy and works best when you're in a high way. You preset the system by giving it the maximum speed and the AI will take care of your vehicle, including braking, remain a safe distance and revving. It also uses sensors to see if you're in the middle of your lane to prevent veering into other lanes.

2. Collision prediction

The sensor set on the car will scan the environment and road surfaces ahead to find any roadblocks that might cause an accident with the car. If it detects that the drivers are careless, it would temporarily override and brake for them.

3. Lane sensing support

This technology can use sensors to "see" the road lines so that it could automatically keep your car in the correct lane. Except you are in the middle of nowhere or in a muddy, country road.

4. Pedestrian detection

The set of sensors can identify the common form of a human being, even when it's utterly dark outside. If the distance to that "unknown object" is sufficient, the car might warn the driver or override the driver's control and brake on its own.

5. Animal detection

The above sensors are integrated with another feature, detecting animals. Though the system use motion sensors both in detecting animal and human, identifying animals are slightly different since their ways of locomotion is different than ours.

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