Ford To Develop Fully Autonomous Cars — Sleepy Drivers To Blame For Real-Life Ultron

Ford will concentrate on developing fully autonomous cars and will skip current semi-autonomous levels found on other cars.

American carmaker Ford is skipping level 3 autonomous driving technology altogether and will instead start concentrating on developing level 5 autonomous cars instead.

Ford To Skip Level 3 Autonomous Driving For Level 5 To Help Sleepy Engineers happy

The decision to skip Level 3 (offered by most vehicles capable of semi-autonomous driving today) for Level 5 autonomy (fully autonomous driving with no human interaction) by the American automotive giant is a reaction to its engineers taking a snooze while behind the wheel.

Ford To Skip Level 3 Autonomous Driving For Level 5 To Help Sleepy Engineers happy

Speaking to Bloomberg, Raj Nair, Ford's chief product development officer revealed that even with "bells, buzzers, warning lights, vibrating seats and steering wheels, and another engineer in the passenger seat" the testers behind the wheel found it hard to concentrate and maintain situational awareness.

Ford To Skip Level 3 Autonomous Driving For Level 5 To Help Sleepy Engineers happy

Nair stated that as Ford's engineers started trusting the autonomous software, they paid less attention to the road and to the controls of the car, which still required human input during emergencies. Nair stated that this could prove to be an issue while deploying level 3 software to cars, which is why Ford decided to skip it all together.

Ford To Skip Level 3 Autonomous Driving For Level 5 To Help Sleepy Engineers happy

Most Viewed Car Photo Gallery

While Ford may not want to offer Level 3 self-driving features in its cars, another American car company, Tesla is pushing ahead with the technology in its electric cars. Click on the photo gallery below to view the latest images of the semi-autonomous Tesla Model S.

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Read more on: #ford #auto news
Article Published On: Wednesday, February 22, 2017, 22:13 [IST]
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