A driverless future of the world

A driverLess future

Swedish car-maker Volvo is testing a prototype, 

self-driving car on public roads, ahead of a large scale pilot programme 

which will see one hundred self-driving Volvos navigating the streets of Gothenburg. 

Andreas Ekenberg, the company’s active safety engineer, gave a ‘hands off’ demonstration of the technology.

 “We now activate the system and I do that by pressing a button here on the steering wheel and the system is now active,

” he explained. “So I can remove my feet from the pedals and my hands from the steering wheel.” The ‘Drive Me’ project will 

focus on a number of areas, such as how autonomous vehicles can improve traffic efficiency and road safety; infrastructure 

requirements; typical traffic situations suitable for autonomous vehicles; customers’ confidence in the cars; and how surrounding

 drivers interact with a self-driving car. These cars will make use of technology that has been developed for Volvo’s active 

accident avoidance system – passive safety – such as cameras, radar and laser together with map data. In addition, those 

features will be joined by a cloud connection and a traffic control centre by 2017.