Turn out the lights, the party’s starting, at least at Ford.
In a move seemingly out of a Stanley Kubrick film, Ford engineers turned the headlights off on one of their autonomous Fusion Hybrid research vehicles, climbed in the back seat and went for a ride on the pitch-black nighttime roads of their Arizona Proving Ground. Driver’s license – or driver input, for that matter – not required.
Using 3-dimensional LiDAR sensors, Ford was able to prove that a car doesn’t need daylight, road lines or cameras to detect the surroundings. All it needs is 2.8 million laser pulses a second scanning the surroundings, radar and the car’s virtual driver software. Engineers who observed the car through night vision goggles said it performed perfectly.
This represents a huge step in the autonomous car movement, which does not bode well for those of us who actually enjoy driving. Yes, fatal accidents are three times as likely to happen at night as they are in the daytime. Drivers are more distracted now than ever. Having droned down the highway on a boring commute for years, I can also see the joy of being able to drink my coffee and read the newspaper on the way to work instead of yelling at the Buick driver in front of me who can’t seem to find his gas pedal.
But what will this lead to? We’ll see. I won’t be surprised if the next thing you know, Skynet will become self-aware and those of us who love to drive will have to lead furtive lives, making clandestine self-driven runs like someone out of a Rush song.
