The next generation of automobiles will be the safest ever, thanks to cutting-edge software and hardware levels, coupled with improvements to safety features with the help of real-time data, according to Al Futtaim’s Trading Enterprises, the distributor of Volvo Cars in the UAE.

 

Volvo Cars has always used traffic data from real-life situations to develop safety technologies and make its cars even safer. For its next generation of vehicles, the company is looking to process data from customer cars in real time, if customers choose to do so and help make its cars safer.

 

"By allowing customers to choose and be a part of improving safety levels and traffic safety in this way, we can make continuous and much faster improvements to the cars, constantly improving safety levels," Volvo Cars said in a statement. 

 

This data would include continuous inputs on the car’s environment from sensors like the high-resolution LiDAR delivered by technology company Luminar.

 

Engineers would be able to validate and verify autonomous drive (AD) features quicker, to promote a safe roll-out of AD technology. 

 

Zenseact (Volvo Cars’ autonomous driving software arm) CEO Ödgärd Andersson said: “With help from real-life data we can speed up our development processes and go from years to days. As real-time collection generates a lot more data, we can create better and higher-quality data sets that allow us to make better and quicker decisions on the next advancements in safety.”

 

To process the real-time traffic data they will collect, Volvo Cars and Zenseact are investing in a data factory that will contain over 200 PebiBytes (225 million gigabytes) of data within the next few years. 

 

By using artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, data can be crunched at record times. Customers will be able to choose whether this data is collected about them, and all collected data will be aggregated with adequate safeguards for customer privacy.

 

Head of R&D Mats Moberg said: “Safety is part of our heritage and the backbone of our company, but software is a crucial part of our modern-day DNA. So while we continue to build on the 50-year expertise of the Volvo Cars Accident Research Team, we can now also leverage AI as a new, virtual accident research team.”

 

The use of real-time data is part of Volvo Cars’ long term vision for a future where collisions simply no longer happen, by equipping its cars with some of the best sensors available and advanced, continuously improving safety and autonomous drive systems.-TradeArabia News Service