I own a 2013 XC60 and as a programmer, I'm amazed at how well their current automation works in practice. The car reads road signs to show me the current speed limit in the dash (actual OCR, not a GPS database). It works amazingly well, except when it's very dark in the winter. Adaptive cruise control flawlessly follows cars based on radar, even in somewhat dramatic full stops, e.g. when there's suddenly heavy traffic ahead. I always have my foot on the break pedal just in case, but I'm yet to have to intervene.
My gut feeling tells me that there should be a mandate that requires all safety software to be open-source and liberally licensed. Safety should be very much part of the commons and we all lose out when this type of software isn't shared freely.
Building high quality safety software and sharing it with all car manufacturers wins way more brownie points in my book than using it as a selling point.
I agree 100% however I think this is probably unlikely to happen. Being safer than another brand makes for great marketing copy and Volvo has been able to rely on that for a very long time. Openly sharing their edge with their competitors doesn't sound like "smart" business. Having said that, they did share their seatbelt design once so maybe....
Someone in this thread mentioned that Volvo let anyone use their patented seat belt design. So there's at least a tiny speck of light in the end of the tunnel :)
Why would it bother OCR'ing road signs? That seems much more error prone and needlessly complex. That data is readily available from a data sources based on your GPS location, I know TomToms and other navigation devices have it.
Maybe because their goal is to steadily build a car system that can read the environment and adapt speed and direction based on the actual situation? a map is not the territory.
The latest models also detect pedestrians, bikes, and even animals -- and the car sets off an alarm and brakes so that we don't run over them. High beams are politely turned off when meeting another car, as well as when passing near pedestrians. The software also performs lane detection, shows you where you're heading when moving in reverse, signals to the driver when another vehicle is close by to the left or right, even if you can't seen them in the rearview mirrors.
Volvo has a goal of preventing or mitigating accidents to such an extent that by 2020 nobody will die in a Volvo when there is a car accident. Their commitment to the safety of car passengers was such that they let everyone freely use their patented seat-belt system when they improved it. They've been running a team in Sweden for decades that travels to every single car accident involving a Volvo, so that they can understand the causes and consequences of the accident, sometimes even repeat the event in lab conditions -- and they can improve the cars accordingly.
Yes, we own a (new) Volvo -- we picked it up at the factory in Sweden, drove around Europe for a few weeks, and returned it for them to ship it over to our US address.
I wonder how lane detection works. I've had it warn me in a situation where there was no markings on the asphalt due to recent construction work, so it seems to be more clever than just detecting when you drive over markings.
I wonder what happens to speed limits when self driving cars are ubiquitous... I mean, once there are no more revenue from violations, and cars know ideal speeds far better than legislatures, should we just let the computers figure out what speed they want to go?
Currently, 'recuding accidents' are the primary driver for speed regulations (at least in Europe)
There are a lot of other variables to optimize for, both on individual basis (fuel, travel time, battery life, ...) and collective basis (congestion locallity, total time lost in congestion, emissions, ...)
I guess legislatures - over time - will try to optimize some variables for 'the greater good' instead of minimizing your travel time :-)
For certain safety classes, to reach the highest qualification, the vehicle-under-test must pass some pedestrian accident scenarios, so it's not that the manufacturers do this out of good will. The S-Class used to flatten pedestrians quite liberally, which caused it to fail certain tests, which in turn caused them to implement this: http://www.daimler.com/dccom/0-5-1210222-1-1210363-1-0-0-121...
At least in Finland, probably in Sweden too speed limits change often (every 6 months) due to winter. In my experience the GPS databases are extremely often not in sync, and you can't predict which speed limits change and when. In addition, there are electronic speed limits that change depending on the weather in real-time. OCR seems like a better option for these conditions.
And they can change faster than that. Yesterday they put up a 50km/h sign for half a kilometer at my drive to work due to some roadwork, today it was gone again.
I know in Seattle there are variable speed limit zones, where the signs are digital displays that can be changed at anytime to reflect appropriate speed limits for the current conditions.
I think OCR may have reliability issues, but most road signage has consistent properties (size, height, font, etc.) that could be easily optimized for.
It also covers the (admittedly limited) situations where no GPS is available (tunnels, skyscrapers). If there are temporary changes in speed limits due to construction or other events, OCR could immediately identify those with no need to download new information.
Speed limits might change without prier notice due to a car accident or road works ahead. Such works might be initiated by authorities responding to an accident or similar without planning or access to update a central database.
Norway :) The road sign reading works well anywhere. Adaptive cruise control works best on highways - it's cruise control, after all. When doing a 90 degree turn, for example, it doesn't "know" what's happening. It works well for slow traffic though, and can do full stops and automatically start driving again when traffic is really slow.
