At Ford, robots in the driver's seat

 

Spine-saving wonder

    The autonomous driving programme was undertaken to spare test drivers the bruising task of testing heavy-duty vehicles' durability. (Ford Motor)

The testing facility, Ford's largest, is where vehicles undergo strenuous durability tests before being deemed fit for production. Intimations of pulpy 1950s sci-fi cinema aside, the robots’ presence should not provoke alarm, as they are monitored 24 hours a day as part of Ford's new durability testing regime.

Roughly three years ago, Ford personnel sat down to discuss how to make truck durability testing safer for its drivers. By October 2012, Ford was testing the F-Series Super Duty pickup truck using robots. "We think it's the world's first robotically driven durability vehicle," Dave Payne, Ford's manager of vehicle development operations, said.

Ford employs United Automobile Workers (UAW) members at its Romeo proving grounds. Unlike some automation projects at UAW-organised assembly plants, Payne said the test drivers supported the move toward robotic testing from the proposal’s beginning. "They knew from the start that we'd be working on this, and they actually helped us select which roads to implement this on because there's obviously certain roads they really don't like to drive."

One of those routes involved driving a large truck just under the size of an 18-wheeler over a 2ft-deep ditch measuring 12ft across – and there were two of them in a row. "You have to drive that truck over that [ditch] at 2.5mph and do it 27,000 times," Payne said. "The first couple drivers came to us and said, 'I can't do this test.' They were getting beat up inside the truck. So we put the robot in it."