A new generation of self-driving test cars are developed by Ford and added more processing power as well as improved LiDAR sensors which give a significant increase in its field of view and vision according to a report by Tech Crunch.

The new Ford Fusion Hybrid autonomous development vehicle uses the same platform but dramatically upgraded its components and capabilities despite removing two LiDAR units from the original design. Ford reportedly has been testing their vehicles in California, Michigan and Arizona in real-world situations.

Chris Brewer, Chief Program Engineer, stated that they can gather as much data from two LiDAR sensors compared to just two because the former provide 360-degree coverage and have a vision the length of two football fields in all directions.

According to other reports, Ford stated that building a completely autonomous vehicle is totally different from building a conventional one which raises a lot of new questions to be answered; What will the car do if there is obstruction on its path? How would the car know which route to take? Ford also stated that they need to develop a virtual driver that is highly dependable as much as a human driver is that makes the right decisions continuously to reach a certain destination.

To reach that level of dependability, Ford installed three optical cameras on the vehicle's roof racks, a front-facing camera behind the windshield, a supercomputer that generates a full terabyte of data per hour, which is more data than an average human would use on a smartphone in 45 years.

The development of Ford's Fusion Hybrid brings them closer to their commitment of bringing totally autonomous vehicles for public use in the year 2021.

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