Apart from the sensor bar on the roof, this Ford Fusion Hybrid looks just like a normal car. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin) Even more robots are coming to California’s roads next year. Yesterday, Ford announced that it will start testing its autonomous Fusion sedans in the state now that it is officially enrolled in the California Autonomous Vehicle Testing Program . The company opened a new R&D center in Palo Alto at the beginning of the year, which among other projects has been working on virtual simulations of autonomous driving as well as sensor fusion to improve the way its cars perceive the world around them. Ford is the 11th group to obtain a California driving license for its autonomous cars, joining other OEMs (BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Nissan, Tesla, and Volkswagen Group), tier one suppliers (Bosch and Delphi ), and tech companies (Cruise Automation and Google). A condition of the self-driving car regulations requires companies to provide California’s DMV with a report any time one of their cars is involved in a collision. Since the rules went into effect in September 2014, there have been a total of 10 incidents . The first, in October 2014, involved one of Delphi’s test vehicles, although it was being driven by a human at the time. The nine other incidents all involve Google’s cars, seven of which were being driven autonomously. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Self-driving Ford Fusions are coming to California next year
