No bathroom breaks needed as robots do the driving

Sitting low in the driver’s seat is the pumps unit that controls the pistons of Ford’s mechanical ‘test driver.

Growing up among uncles and cousins who drove trucks and buses, I was encouraged to learn how to drive when I was still too short to see over the dashboard of a patient  old Ford F250. 

I would pull out the choke, slip down to brace my back against the front of the seat to both stomp on the clutch pedal and pull on the thick, rusted gear into some gear, then slooowly release the clutch before popping up like a meerkat to stand on tippy toe as I wrestled with the heavy steering wheel. 

Ford has now built a set of robots that, like my young self, is too low in the seat to see over the dashboard, but it can do all the pushing and shoving needed for many hundreds of hours without tiring. 

The 'feet' that presses the pedals. 

Frank Seelig, supervisor of Wind Tunnel Testing at Ford Europe’s Weather Factory in Cologne, Germany, reports that the state-of-the-art factory has never been busier. 

The facility can simulate a range of extreme conditions to enable engineers to submit engines to extreme temperatures from -40° C to +80° C, or very high altitudes.

So realistic are the simulated conditions, said Seelig, that human test drivers need to have oxygen on board for the high-altitude tests. Which is why Ford had two robot test drivers built, nicknamed Shelby and Miles, to do the tests the humans can’t, replicating each move perfectly multiple times.

How it works

The robot test drivers, basically a pump powering pistons designed to deliver a very narrow range of motions, do not feel temperature or care about altitude. Instead, they do as they are told and can be set up and programmed for different driving styles. The robot test drivers’ “legs” press down on the accelerator, brake and clutch pedals. One “arm” is positioned to change the gear and the other is used to start and stop the engine and a third turns the steering wheel.

“These two new drivers are fantastic additions to the team as they can take on the challenging endurance tests at high altitudes and in hot temperatures. Once the robot is in the driver’s seat, we can run tests through the night without ever having to worry that the driver will need a sandwich or a bathroom break,” said Seelig. 

After putting the car through the robots’ paces on a dynamometer, Ford follows up with real-world human drivers testing their vehicles across the world, including the Grossglockner mountain in Austria and the snowy Arjeplog region in Sweden.