That Volvo is one of the manufacturers most concerned about safety on board its vehicles is no secret. The Swedes want there to be no fatalities in their cars in the not too distant future and they do not hesitate to adopt striking measures such as the maximum speed limitation to 180 km / h or the inclusion of different technologies. One of those that will arrive shortly is the new Lidar that will debut in its next generation of large models.
The Lidar is a device that already appears in the prototypes of autonomous cars and that allows determining the distance between the car and other objects thanks to a pulsed laser beam. In this case, Volvo has partnered with the American company, Luminar, a specialist in this type of technology. The first copies to be carried will be those that use the SPA 2 platform from 2022. This is an evolution of the Scalable Product Architecture used by the current XC90, S90 and V90.
These vehicles will be able to remotely update their software and optionally offer the Highway Pilot, a feature that makes them autonomous while driving on the highway. At Volvo, they still think that well-developed autonomous driving can save many lives in the future and they will continue to bet on introducing it little by little into their specimens. This Lidar will also help the other systems and driving aids to have a more precise behavior.
As we were saying, thanks to that pulsed laser beam it is possible to scan the environment in 3D and create a kind of map in real time. Adding the information taken by cameras and radars, a more accurate vision will be achieved. There is still a long way to go in this area, but Volvo seems to be one of the best positioned to gain public confidence with autonomous driving. Possibly increase their agreement with Luminar to continue in this line