Ford announced Friday that it will be the first automaker to test its autonomous car program at a fake city in Michigan.
The company tested its recently engineered driverless car, Fusion, at MCity, a fake, simulated city which is almost 130,000 square meters that is located in Ann Arbor, Mich. Mcity, a result of a collaboration between the University of Michigan and Michigan's Department of Transportation, was launched earlier this year.
Ford tested autonomous cars for over a decade before Fusion was launched in 2013.
"Testing Ford's autonomous vehicle fleet at Mcity provides another challenging, yet safe, urban environment to repeatedly check and hone these new technologies," said Raj Nair, vice president of Global Product Development for Ford, according to the Ford Motor Company Media Center. "This is an important step in making millions of people's lives better and improving their mobility."
Together with car manufacturers like Honda and General Motors, Ford aims to improve their cars' road safety features.
"We've been testing (autonomous) cars in the real world, but using a place like Mcity will allow us to refine our algorithms and better calibrate car sensors by repeating specific situations in a reliable way," Nair added, according to USA Today.
Some of the features of the Fusion Hybrid Autonomous Research Vehicle include cameras, sensors, and even radar to make sure that the car generates real-time 3D maps of its surroundings. This feature permits the vehicle to make decisions as it navigated around Mcity, Tech Times reported.
"The goal of Mcity is that we get a scaling factor. Every mile driven there can represent 10, 100 or 1,000 miles of on-road driving in terms of our ability to pack in the occurrences of difficult events," said Ryan Eustice, associate professor at University of Michigan and principal investigator in the car company's collaboration with the university, according to The Detroit Free Press.
Click the link below to see Ford's driverless car in action.
#Ford is the first automaker to test an autonomous vehicle at Mcity. See it in action. https://t.co/aXrEn1XTVT
— Ford Motor Company (@Ford) November 13, 2015
