Gadgetory

first they can take care of themselves are pretty common plates these days in fact every car that's on the market right now has traction control and stability control built-in even self-driving cars are not that rare every manufacturer is working on some sort of autonomous technology because they know that that's the future but what is rare is the opportunity to actually get into one of those cars and take it onto the open road and that's why we've come all the way to lovely Gothenburg Sweden and some lovely spring weather to test drive this this is the Volvo DRI me program it's a car that can drive itself so we're inside the self-driving car now we're being shadowed by this ridiculous six wheeled Volvo up ahead of us which is kind of crazy but the way I should here to talk about this car we with Stefano Stefan this is a self-driving car but I noticed that you're actually driving the car why is that what the concept is basically that you're at work and now you want to go home to drive home what will happen is that you are going to drive the vehicle to the piece of road which is certified where you can switch on your autonomous functionality we're gonna get through the center city basically get out to the highway which is probably the most congested part anyway and then at that point you can hit button and relax right right can you tell me about what sort of things we've added on this car to enable self-driving so what we have added to this car in particular is basically software it is exciting because as I said we are using technologies which are very mature we have the vision up here we have a laser sensor to the right of it and then we have radar in the front so it's basically the same stuff is on Volvo cars right now it's something that you can buy at every war with every model car is an option package so I'm just pushing a plus button releasing the steering wheel and the pedals and it's not more dramatic than them and the car is holding about 70 kilometers an hour is it going to maintain the speed limit yes okay one of the main benefits of autonomous Drive is safety now only by having these vehicles really following the speed limits that you having on the road already that will impact and the safety on the road so there are a few things that you still need to do as a driver if you're in the car one thing is changing lanes that can't change lanes for itself and there is no infrastructure to vehicle communication just yet so if there is somebody working on a road that kind of thing right now you'll need to manually do around that but again that's the kind of thing that should be in place by 2017 when these cars are available for consumers and the other thing is it can't quite merge just yet either but again early days still just a prototype what you could do is that you can put on existing infrastructure as you have here for instance you can put one more Lane which is much much narrower and that way you can you can increase the capacity of the road and one of the things that we are looking at is for instance lane markings these are a type of infrastructure support that we really hope to have there you go that was almost this is something that the car would not do today but it's also something that should be implemented by 2017 what we are going to have in 2017 again the plan is that the vehicle should be able to take you on this route from A to B in a safe manner this is not that part this is a very early prototype but idea is that by 2017 we will have 100 of those vehicles and be able to do something else you had to say well now what good is a self-driving car if you have to park it yourself that's no fun at all thankfully Volvo's get you covered there too I need to do is stop your car get out so pull out your smartphone and iPhone in this case hit a button the car will find a parking space for itself the car uses pretty standard technology that's already found on a lot of Volvo's in the road today cameras looking forward radar sensors and also ultrasonic sensors and the bumpers and fenders to detect where those parking spots are and to make sure that it doesn't back up a little bit too far and run into the car behind it when you're done and you're ready to get your car back all you need to do take your phone out of your pocket and hit a button self-driving cars and self-parking cars it's impressive stuff but probably what's even more impressive is that Volvo's doing all this with really just the sensors that are already built in production cars today yeah there's some GPS thrown on the roof there but ultimately that's not really needed for the system it's just basically a safety blanket in case something goes wrong this car as is it's really just a development program it's the brains inside that are what they're still working on and by 2017 some people will be able to buy this car but for now I'm gonna try take this thing for a spin give more my speed I can find the keys