Volvo aims to achieve zero-collision goal by using real-time data of drivers

Volvo aims to make its next generation of cars the safest ever as it plans to use real-time data of customers to improve the safety features of its cars. The company says that it has always taken a data-driven approach to safety by using traffic data from real-life situations to develop new safety technologies. Now, real-time data from customer cars will help improvise safety technologies, if customers choose to share data. Volvo's first electric-only SUV will benefit from this technology.

In this process, continuous inputs will be taken from the car’s environment using the high-resolution LiDAR sensors. With this approach, Volvo wants to achieve its long term vision of a future where there will be no collisions. With the data generated from millions of kilometres driven by Volvo drivers, the company's engineers will be able to validate autonomous driving features for specific geographic locations much quicker than with a limited number of cars on a test track. Verified updates and new features will be rolled out rapidly through over-the-air updates.

The CEO of Zenseact, Volvo Cars’ autonomous driving software arm, Ödgärd Andersson, stressed that real-time data will help the company get good quality data sets which in turn will help to make quick and better decisions in terms of safety. “With help from real-life data we can speed up our development processes and go from years to days," he added.

(Also see | In pics: Volvo sets the tone for its future electric cars)

To process the kind of data, Volvo Cars and Zenseact together are investing in a data factory that will contain over 200 PebiBytes (225 million gigabytes) of data within the next few years. By usage of artificial intelligence (AI), these huge data sets will be crunched at record times. Customers will be able to choose whether or not to share data, and all collected data will be aggregated with adequate safeguards for customer privacy.

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