During CES 2022, Volvo has announced that the company will debut its Ride Pilot, an autonomous driving feature in California by the middle of this year. Once the feature has been approved for use on highways, it will be offered to customers.
The company says that the Ride Pilot feature will be offered to customers as a paid add-on for a new electric SUV that it plans to announce later this year. The feature is also planned to be released in other markets.
For creating Ride Pilot, Volvo worked with Zenseact and LiDAR developer Luminar. The feature is currently being tested in Sweden. Volvo says that Ride Pilot utilizes a Luminar Iris LiDAR sensor complemented by eight cameras, 16 ultrasonic sensors, and five radars to enable the software to judge depth.
The company also says that it will push out continuous over-the-air updates to ensure the feature is safe to use. Martin Kristensson, Head of AD and Mobility at Volvo, said: “When we say self-driving, we mean self-driving. So this will be a feature or function where the car is actually responsible for the driving so you will not need to keep your hands on the steering wheel and you will not need to keep your eyes off the road.”
Ride Pilot is described as a hands-off, eyes-off system, which means that a driver will be free to do other things when the system is activated. This is different from existing self-driving systems which require constant monitoring from the driver.
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