How Ford Builds Autonomous Vehicles

Chris Brewer, the chief engineer for Ford’s Autonomous Vehicle Program, has a great post on Medium outlining the major components of Ford’s self-driving car.

Pay attention to the part where he talks about compute platforms and power consumption. That was my team!

Well, to make fully autonomous SAE-defined level 4-capable vehicles, which do not need a driver to take control, the car must be able to perform what a human can perform behind the wheel. Our virtual driver system is designed to do just that. It is made up of:

Sensors — LiDAR, cameras and radar

Algorithms for localization and path planning

Computer vision and machine learning

Highly detailed 3D maps

Computational and electronics horsepower to make it all work

It comes with a nifty video!