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Volvo is testing self-driving cars with real families
Picture a self-driving car test in your head and you probably see an engineer or two scrutinizing data... and no one else. Everyday people, if they're present at all, tend to be relegated to the back seat. Volvo is trying something different: it just revealed that it's conducting autonomous vehicle tests with an ordinary family, the Hains from Gothenburg, Sweden. The four-person household is convenient for marketing, of course (we care about people!), but they serve an important purpose: they'll help Volvo understand how non-engineers deal with self-driving tech. How do they react when the car switches between manual and autonomous modes, and what do they do at those times when they aren't taking the wheel?
Volvo to conduct large-scale autonomous car tests by 2017
Volvo has been one of the stronger proponents of self-driving cars, and it's proving that today by detailing its plans for a large-scale autonomous vehicle project in its native Sweden. The Drive Me initiative will put 100 robot cars on Gothenburg's streets, where they'll explore the social and technical challenges involved in going hands-free. As with smaller tests, Volvo will still require a human in the driver's seat for trickier situations. The project officially begins in 2014, although locals will have to be patient -- Volvo is only promising that the autonomous fleet will hit the road "by 2017."
