TECH SPECIAL....Ford Is Ready for the Autonomous Car.

Ford Is Ready for the Autonomous Car. Are the Customers Ready?

The automobile industry has already developed all the technology necessary to create truly autonomous vehicles, Ford engineers claim. The reasons there aren’t driverless cars all over the road today is in part a cost issue — the sensors and automated intelligence required aren’t cheap — but mainly one of driver mindset. Your typical commuter isn’t quite ready to take the sizeable leap from cruise control to automated driving.

“There is no technology barrier from going where we are now to the autonomous car,” said Jim McBride, a Ford Research and Innovation technical expert who specializes in autonomous vehicle technologies. “There are affordability issues, but the big barrier to overcome is customer acceptance.” McBride said Ford has already built research vehicles with high-resolution omnidirectional cameras that can see the road and the car’s surroundings far better than any driver with a few mirrors. Those vehicles also have scanning lasers that can model the world around it in 3D. Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication standards have been finalised that would allow cars not only to broadcast their location and speed to one another but also create ad hoc vehicular networks — hive minds that could coordinate the actions of thousands of automobiles on the roadway. Those assets combined with locationbased technologies and growing streetview-image databases from companies like Google can give a car a greater awareness of its surroundings than any driver alone could achieve, McBride said. And while laser arrays and omnidirectional cameras may be price-prohibitive, there are plenty of features already in vehicles today, such as front- and rear-facing cameras and ultrasonic sensors, that could perform many of those advanced technologies’ basic functions, he added.

But while Ford may be ready to take that technological jump, drivers aren’t quite prepared to take the leap of faith necessary to forfeit complete control of their vehicles to an on-board computer or larger network intelligence, said Mike Kane, the Ford vehicle engineering supervisor for driver assistance technologies. It’s not that drivers are adamantly opposed to the concept of a driverless car, Kane said; they just need to be introduced to that concept gradually.

Kane said Ford has hosted clinics and done polling on how consumers feel about autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles. It found that while people are still uncomfortable with the idea of ceding the driver’s seat to a computer, they are very open to the idea of their cars becoming more intelligent and aware. New capabilities like collision warning for safety, automatic parallel parking, and Ford’s Sync voice-control technology have been well-received. Ford believes that through the gradual introduction of more automation, drivers will come around to the idea of a car that drives itself. “People are more accepting of the idea,” Kane said. “They always want their cars to do more. … It’s going to take a decade before the masses fully accept the autonomous car, but they’ll get there.”
To help them along, Ford is starting to move automation features that were previously only available in high-end luxury cars down to mass-market vehicles. The new Ford Fusion is the first affordable sedan to contain the automaker’s Lane Keeping System, which uses the car’s forward camera to detect when a car is drifting outside the lines. The system alerts the driver through vibrations in the steering wheel and audio warnings, but if the driver doesn’t respond, the car will automatically correct, nudging the vehicle back into its lane. That is an example of automation on the small scale, Kane said. The car isn’t taking over. It’s just giving the driver prompts.

KEVIN FITCHARD BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK ET120412