A family in Gothenburg, Sweden has been given the chance to be among the first people in the world to experience Volvo’s fully-autonomous car.
The Hain family will take part in the local automaker’s real-life autonomous drive research program in everyday traffic as Volvo looks to accelerate the development of its self-driving technologies in what it claims “is probably the most advanced, ambitious and extensive real-life autonomous drive project in existence”.
As part of the program, up to 100 autonomous Volvos will hit the streets around Gothenburg throughout 2017 and in the near future, will expand to other cities around the world.
Speaking of the program, senior vice president of research and development at Volvo Car Group, Henrik Green, said “The aim of the Drive Me research project is to focus on how to enhance people’s lives and have a positive impact on society. We take a holistic rather than a purely technical approach to our research and development processes. No one else to our knowledge is developing autonomous drive from a human-centric standpoint.
“We want to learn more around how people feel when they engage and disengage autonomous drive, what the handover should be like, and what sort of things they would do in the car when it’s driving them to their destination,” Green said.
Volvo is certainly one of the leading automakers in the self-driving field and already testing autonomous prototypes around the world. However not everything has been plain sailing because last month, the company was ordered to stop its self-driving program with Uber in San Francisco.
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