Torc Autonomous car completes 4,300-mile cross-country trip...
Car drove 4,300-plus miles autonomously on cross-country
trip, ending at Virginia's Executive Mansion
By KATHRYN E. YOUNG Richmond Times-Dispatch Jul 26, 2017
An autonomous Lexus RX hybrid completed its 5,300-plus
mile, round-trip cross-country journey at Virginia’s Executive Mansion on
Wednesday afternoon.
For the bulk of the trip, the vehicle drove more than
4,300 miles autonomously.
The self-driving vehicle, programmed by Blacksburg-based
Torc Robotics, started its journey July 7 in Washington, D.C., headed west to
Seattle, returned east to Richmond and was greeted by Gov. Terry McAuliffe in
Capitol Square.
“That was something,” McAuliffe said as he got out of the
vehicle after a test ride.
“This (autonomous driving) technology is coming, and we
want to be in front of it here in Virginia. We want to be the leader,”
McAuliffe said.
One of the benefits of driving cross-country was testing
the car in a variety of road and weather conditions, the company said.
Three certified safety drivers and one Torc engineer went
on the cross-country trip. The safety drivers rotated time behind the wheel for
the duration of the trip to assist the car in case of emergency.
Along the nearly three-week journey, Torc Robotics CEO
and co-founder Michael Fleming said, many people photographed the vehicle,
which is equipped with a large, spinning lidar (light detection and ranging)
system mounted to the roof, an array of radar, video cameras and two GPS
antennas. Radar systems also are hidden inside bumpers.
Inside the car, the only noticeable modification is the
addition of a tablet mounted on the center console. All the car’s sensors feed
data into a computer in a compartment below the trunk.
The dashboard has three indicator lights: green to let
the driver know all is going well; yellow appears when the car detects a minor
obstacle that the driver should know about; and red for when it’s time to hand
controls back over to the driver.
This was not Torc’s first long-distance test. One of the
company’s cars logged over a 1,000 miles during a round trip from its
headquarters in Blacksburg to the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant in Detroit — the
birthplace of the Model T.
Fleming said autonomous cars will be available to the
public “sooner than you think.”
“The commonwealth of Virginia is a pro-business,
self-driving-friendly state,” Fleming said. “We have grown our technology here
within the commonwealth.”
The business began as a startup in 2005 and developed the
technology in partnership with Virginia Tech in 2007. Torc’s technology has
been applied to a variety of ground vehicles, including large mining trucks and
military vehicles.
“We are a company that is focused on ... the intelligence
of self-driving vehicles” as opposed to building cars, Fleming said. Torc is
creating the technology that would be integrated into vehicles.
McAuliffe said about 85 miles of sensors will be
installed for autonomous vehicles along Interstate 95 in Northern Virginia.
However, no laws have yet been passed regarding
self-driving cars.
“We did not put any regulations in ... because we don’t
know what the innovation is going to do, and what we do not want to do is
stifle innovation,” McAuliffe said.
“We have advanced light years over the past 3½ years”
with regards to autonomous car technology, said Karen Jackson, Virginia’s
secretary of technology.
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