24th February 2021
In the province of Groningen, in the Netherlands, an autonomous vehicle has reached a speed record of more than 70 kilometers per hour. Additionally, the car got stopped from a distance and it managed to stop for a crossing robot. This combination of having no passenger in the vehicle while getting to a high speed and remaining the ability to stop in time is important to be able to use autonomous vehicles on public roads. Do you want to know more about the innovations regarding autonomous vehicles and the role of Xsens in this? Read all about it in this blog!
What is an autonomous vehicle exactly?
An autonomous vehicle is any vehicle equipped with intelligent technologies that makes a vehicle able to operate without the involvement of a human. There are different levels in autonomous vehicles: no automation, driver assistance, partial automation, conditional automation, high automation, and full automation. These vehicles can be driverless cars, but it might also be applied to other vehicles. The test day in Groningen was done with an autonomous car, but if all road tests result in a success and an autonomous vehicle can be developed, these technologies might be applied to other vehicles as well. For example, in the air, on the sea, and on the railway, to mix autonomous transportation.
The potential for autonomous transportation
Roads that are easy to drive on can be done by the autopilot, while the difficult places can be done by a driver. So, think about using the autopilot on the countryside and not so much in city centers, and vice versa. The countryside can be very distant from the city centers and, therefore, the demand for transportation is lower. Using autonomous transportation, flexibility can be met in increasing the accessibility without having structural (public) transportation routes to these areas. Increasing this accessibility might be crucial for the countryside to keep its residents. So, autonomous transportation has a great potential!
The contribution of Xsens’ inertial sensors
Now you know a lot about autonomous transportation, but how does Xsens contribute in this development? In order to create an autonomous vehicle, several technological elements are necessary. Among these, inertial sensor modules of Xsens, the MTi 680G, are used in the autopilot for orientation and centimeter accurate positioning. This element, the MTi 680G inertial sensor modules, provided by Xsens, combined with all the other intelligent technologies makes it possible to develop a driverless car.
Do you want to know more about autonomous vehicles and how Xsens contributions to this development with inertial sensor modules? We are more than happy to tell you everything about the MTi series of Xsens and how these inertial sensors can be applied in different cases on land, on sea, and in the air. So, do not hesitate to contact us and get to know everything about our MTi series!
The MTi 680G is part of the MTi 600-series. Find out more about it below:
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