A Transit commercial van barrels down a straightaway at Ford Motor Co.’s Michigan Proving Grounds in Romeo, careening over about a dozen curbs before stopping, spinning around, and doing it all over again.
There is no one in the van — the closest person is a few hundred yards away, monitoring the test tracks by video — and no one has a remote-control in hand to steer the van from afar.
This is the future of vehicle testing, at least according to Ford, where a nearly $100,000 robot drives vehicles through rigorous conditions as part of the automaker’s efforts to test the durability of its cars and trucks.
Source
The Detroit News