The autonomous car, for all intents and purposes, is already upon us—or at least it will be once Volvo comes to market with its next-gen XC90 near the end of 2014. That’s when the Swedish marque, synonymous with advancements in safety tech, will introduce the following: night-time pedestrian detection, road-edge and barrier detection, new-gen adaptive cruise control, and—here’s the kicker—autonomous parking.
When Volvo describes autonomous parking, it’s not talking about systems that will tuck your ride into a parallel parking space with you at the helm as a failsafe. The 2015 Volvo XC90 will have fully autonomous parking—Audi is developing a similar system, which we witnessed at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show—that will allow the driver to get out of the vehicle while the SUV looks for, and slots itself into, a parking spot. Volvo didn’t go into detail as to how this will be achieved, but Audi’s system is reliant on lasers and Wi-Fi to navigate—infrastructure not prevalent in many of this country’s parking lots.
Road-edge and barrier detection is perhaps just as intriguing as the autonomous parking feature. This system can detect the edge of a road, even if it’s not marked—which Volvo claims is a world first—and, as the name implies, barriers, too. If the vehicle determines that the car is leaving the roadway, it provides steering input to keep the vehicle on the road.
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Another world first, according to the Swedish manufacturer, is its night-time pedestrian detection. This will use the brand’s existing pedestrian-detection system—a combination of radar and a forward-facing camera mounted behind the rearview mirror—and adapt it for night-time use. Amazingly, adaptive cruise control is becoming somewhat pedestrian, but Volvo’s variation on the theme will add steering assist to keep the car in the correct lane and with the flow of traffic, automatically following the vehicle ahead—not unlike the Super Cruise feature Cadillac has been developing.
Source: CarAndDriver
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