The future of the automobile isn’t that far away and part of that future encompasses cars that drive themselves. Volvo is at the forefront of that research and they have completed a research project using magnets in the roadway to help the car determine its position. While established positioning technologies such as GPS and cameras have limitations in certain conditions, road-integrated magnets remain unaffected by physical obstacles and poor weather conditions.
In parallel with the potential in the field of autonomous driving, road-integrated magnets open up a number of other possibilities:
- Incorporating magnet-based positioning in preventive safety systems could help prevent run-off road accidents.
- Magnets could facilitate accuracy of winter road maintenance, which in turn could prevent damage to snow-covered objects, such as barriers and signs, near the road edge.
- There is also a possibility of more efficient utilization of road space since accurate positioning could allow lanes to be narrower.
To test this Volvo Cars’ research team created a 100-metre long test track at the company’s testing facilities in Hällered outside Gothenburg, Sweden. A pattern of round ferrite magnets (40×15 mm) was located 200 mm below the road surface. The car was equipped with several magnetic field sensors. This was designed to evaluate crucial issues, such as detection range, reliability, durability, cost and the impact on road maintenance. The test results were very positive and have caught the attention of Swedish Transport Administration who co-operated with Volvo in this study. Expect to see a larger implementation on Swedish roads soon which will hopefully usher in a era of vehicles that drive themselves.
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Volvo Testing Road Magnets For Accurate Positioning Of Self-Driving Cars
The future of the automobile isn’t that far away and part of that future encompasses cars that drive themselves. Volvo is at the forefront of that research and they have completed a research project using magnets in the roadway to help the car determine its position. While established positioning technologies such as GPS and cameras have limitations in certain conditions, road-integrated magnets remain unaffected by physical obstacles and poor weather conditions.
In parallel with the potential in the field of autonomous driving, road-integrated magnets open up a number of other possibilities:
To test this Volvo Cars’ research team created a 100-metre long test track at the company’s testing facilities in Hällered outside Gothenburg, Sweden. A pattern of round ferrite magnets (40×15 mm) was located 200 mm below the road surface. The car was equipped with several magnetic field sensors. This was designed to evaluate crucial issues, such as detection range, reliability, durability, cost and the impact on road maintenance. The test results were very positive and have caught the attention of Swedish Transport Administration who co-operated with Volvo in this study. Expect to see a larger implementation on Swedish roads soon which will hopefully usher in a era of vehicles that drive themselves.
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This entry was posted on April 4, 2014 at 6:50 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Volvo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.