Ford has announced at this week's Detroit Auto show that it is testing self-driving cars in bad weather conditions including snow, rain, and hail. Industry experts have shared it is one of the biggest technical issues that has prevented driverless vehicles being sold commercially.
The Henry Ford-founded company reported that it has been doing sensor tests for over a year, according to BBC. However, this is the first time it has performed tests in a snowy environment.
Ford's headquarters are located in Michigan, where snowy conditions are common. This makes the road tests in snowy weather easier.
The company points out that driving sensors on top of autonomous vehicles do not work in snow. Snow prevents LiDAR (light/radar) sensors from reading high-tech maps of the auto's surroundings, such as road markings.
Ford is using LiDAR to pick up landmarks such as road signs and buildings above the road. It then switches to high-resolution road maps stored on the car's onboard software, according to The Verge.
LiDAR functions by quickly firing out laser light from the car. It then measures the amount of reflected light that returns, funding like a type of radar that uses light instead of radio waves.
Greg Stevens heads Ford's driver assistance research. He pointed out that human drivers are able to deal with fast-changing weather conditions, but driverless vehicles must be designed to deal with such situations in the same manner.
Ford is the first automaker to road-test its vehicles in a fake city, which is named Mcity. It was constructed by the University of Michigan.
Google is also using bad weather to test its self-driving cars. In its December report the search giant noted that it is using California's rainy weather to test its autonomous car fleet.
However, a big problem is that Google's two testing areas make it difficult to test robotic cars in snowy conditions. They include California's Silicon Valley and Austin, Texas.
The Verge notes that Ford could be testing self-driving cars in snow for Google. A rumored partnership between the automobile and tech giants was expected but not revealed at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2016. It might take place at the Detroit Auto Show instead.