And it’s not just snow that poses a problem.To teach a car to cope with whatever Mother Nature throws its way, Sensor Cortek outfits vehicles with laser imaging, detection and ranging sensors, radar, cameras and advanced GPS systems.
Lidar and cameras are based on having line of sight, making them vulnerable to any obstruction between the sensor and the object it needs to detect, whereas radar doesn’t need to “see” an object to detect it. “Think about autonomous cars trying to make right in a snowstorm in a busy intersection … and you have cyclists, you have can hardly see street signs or markings,” he said.
Sometimes Hassanat returns with a few inches of snow sitting on the sensors. Other times they’re bare, but he’s encountered winds or blowing snow and debris that affected sight lines.Article content Auto and tech companies developing autonomous cars have encountered difficulty in extreme weather conditions, Google owner Alphabet Inc. admitting its own driverless vehicle project had found snow a struggle as far back as 2015.Article content
Automakers Ford Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG abandoned Argo AI, their autonomous vehicle company, last October, saying they don’t see a path to profitability for the project.