(SWEDEN)
Two families are taking part in Volvo’s autonomous focussed Drive Me project.
Innovators Magazine reported on the initiative in January and the Swedish car giants plans to have fully autonomous cars on the market by 2021.
And over the next few years Volvo intends to have 100 people take part in Drive Me and help test self-driving cars on public roads around Gothenburg.
The Hains and the Simonovskis, from the Gothenburg area, are the first two families involved and both have received their Volvo XC90 premium SUVs.
Sensors and cameras are rigged up the SUVs, which have all the latest ‘driver assistance technology’, to allow engineers to monitor how users interact with the vehicles during day-to-day activities.
“Drive Me is an important research project for Volvo Cars,” said Henrik Green, Senior Vice President for the company’s R&D department. “We expect to learn a lot from engaging these families and will use their experiences to shape the development of our autonomous driving technology, so that by 2021 we can offer our customers a fully autonomous car.”
Drivers will begin by controlling the cars with the steering wheel before moving to more autonomous scenarios with ‘special training’.
