The electronics might not be from Ford but that vehicle is a Ford Explorer, and probably one with the police package. Ford sells a police package Explorer to several police departments in the US.
My brother bought a subaru, and then purchased a third party device that interfaced with the car’s sensors and made it mostly self-driving. It could handle navigating from his house in an area not quite fully urban, to the main roads, then to the highway, then to wherever his destination was without any input from him aside from the address. None of that was offered from subaru. I wouldn’t doubt something similar could be done with other manufacturer’s vehicles/sensor systems.
Sometimes the car manufacturer just doesn’t want to implement something like that, while the capability exists.
Yes. That’s what I meant. I’d bet this “Policing Lab” is closer to MTV’s Pimp my Ride with Xzibit, than a research institute outperforming Ford at their own cars with cutting-edge research on Lidar, sensor fusion and custom AI training… They likely have someone who does the vinyl on the car, someone who cuts a hole in the roof so the drone can be deployed and an electrician to wire everything to 2 computers and 3 smartphones. Only difference they don’t install a whirlpool and a sound system in the back. Okay, there has to be a bit more to this story, but they omit all the interesting (technical) details, I wonder why…
Edit: And reading their website makes me reconsider what I just said. Seems they have some other surveillance tech to sell and embedded and AI assistance and optimization. Could be a marketing campaign to sell the other stuff. And they themselves don’t write a lot about self-driving. From what I gather on their website, the car is supposed to sit somewhere, as deterrence, and provide a live video-feed and scan license plates. That’s what it does autonomously, not really drive on its own. And then there’s the drone on top and the entire car can be used as an intercom.
This isn’t from ford, they mention in the video is donated by another company
The electronics might not be from Ford but that vehicle is a Ford Explorer, and probably one with the police package. Ford sells a police package Explorer to several police departments in the US.
It is a safe guess that nobody has self driving Fords more advanced than Ford.
Maybe…
My brother bought a subaru, and then purchased a third party device that interfaced with the car’s sensors and made it mostly self-driving. It could handle navigating from his house in an area not quite fully urban, to the main roads, then to the highway, then to wherever his destination was without any input from him aside from the address. None of that was offered from subaru. I wouldn’t doubt something similar could be done with other manufacturer’s vehicles/sensor systems.
Sometimes the car manufacturer just doesn’t want to implement something like that, while the capability exists.
Yes. That’s what I meant. I’d bet this “Policing Lab” is closer to MTV’s Pimp my Ride with Xzibit, than a research institute outperforming Ford at their own cars with cutting-edge research on Lidar, sensor fusion and custom AI training… They likely have someone who does the vinyl on the car, someone who cuts a hole in the roof so the drone can be deployed and an electrician to wire everything to 2 computers and 3 smartphones. Only difference they don’t install a whirlpool and a sound system in the back. Okay, there has to be a bit more to this story, but they omit all the interesting (technical) details, I wonder why…
Edit: And reading their website makes me reconsider what I just said. Seems they have some other surveillance tech to sell and embedded and AI assistance and optimization. Could be a marketing campaign to sell the other stuff. And they themselves don’t write a lot about self-driving. From what I gather on their website, the car is supposed to sit somewhere, as deterrence, and provide a live video-feed and scan license plates. That’s what it does autonomously, not really drive on its own. And then there’s the drone on top and the entire car can be used as an intercom.