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Many say that self-driving vehicles are the future of movement on four wheels. Car manufacturers and software developers are significantly investing to shift as close as possible to this ideal scenario. Among these, General Motors and Cruise recently announced they will be investing $35 billion in electric and self-driving vehicles by the end of 2025, with $2 billion dollars allotted to driverless cars in 2023 alone. One of the greatest pitfalls so far ‒ and that has put the brakes on this trend ‒ is how to safely operate in towns and cities, avoiding incidents and accidents especially in situations where emergency service vehicles are involved.
One dramatic cases took place in San Francisco last April, when a fire engine responding to a blaze tried to overtake a double-parked refuse collection vehicle by using the opposite lane. However, the fire truck's path was blocked by an autonomous car with no driver inside, managed by Cruise (a General Motors subsidiary). While a human would have been able to reverse to free the lane, the Cruise car stayed put. The fire engine could get on its way again only once the driver of the refuse truck had moved the vehicle. The incident slowed the firefighters' emergency response to a blaze that caused damage to property and harm to humans. This is the hitch: ensuring safety, avoiding negative repercussions on traffic and guaranteeing circulation accessibility.
These issues aside ‒ which will certainly be resolved ‒ the developers are doing an excellent job. One such item of recent news is the record achieved by a self-driving car from Milan Polytechnic: PoliMove notched up a speed of 309 kilometres per hour, breaking the previous record of 282.4 km/h for a driverless car on the straight. Organised on the NASA landing strip at Cape Canaveral, a similar experiment will soon be repeated in Atlanta.
A speed of 309 km/h ‒ 309.3 to be exact ‒ has now been reached. Prior to this, no other car driven by artificial intelligence (AI) had ever been so quick. On 27 April, on a straight stretch of the Space Shuttle airstrip at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, the PoliMove-Milan Polytechnic car set the world speed record for a fully autonomous vehicle on the straight (the previous record was 282.4 km/h, at Roborace).
The Polytechnic team had already set a new record on 26 April but decided to up the target to try for an even better performance. On 27 April, the PoliMove vehicle outdid itself and reached an incredible speed of 309.3 km/h, amply breaking the 'barrier' of 300 km/h. The speed of 309.3 km/h was registered as the average for a kilometre during two consecutive attempts in opposite directions (to counterbalance any wind factor).
The Polytechnic team was the only one authorised to make this attempt, thanks to its Las Vegas victory in the Indy Autonomous Challenge. In a few days' time they will try to repeat the undertaking in Atlanta, this time on a racing track and not on a straight airstrip.
PoliMove is part of the Polytechnic research group Move, helmed by Professor Sergio Savaresi, which has been focusing on autonomous land vehicles of all types ‒ from electric bicycles to automobiles through to tractors ‒ for the last 20 years. On 7 January 2022, the Milan Polytechnic team were in Las Vegas to win the Indy Autonomous Challenge (the first head-to-head race between AI-driven vehicles) where PoliMove reached a track speed of 278.4 km/h. The race saw the involvement of some of the world's most prominent universities. All the cars were Dallara AV-21s ‒ the same for all the competitors; the difference was in the work by each individual team.
The automotive industry shares many questions with architecture, design and urban planning. For example: how to engage with society and how to imagine the future of our cities in terms of comfort and saving energy.
There are entire urban neighbourhoods that are evolving in an eco-friendly key to best move towards this type of future. Some such examples are the latest real estate developments in Milan, including Cefalonia 18 and Milano 3.0 ‒ both eligible candidates for The Plan Real Estate Award 2022 (you can read more on this here).
This topic was also discussed recently by Nicola Leonardi, Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Plan, with Robin Page, Senior Vice President - Design at Volvo.
Nicola Leonardi Given the standpoint of your amazing career that has seen you working with Rolls-Royce, Bugatti, Bentley and now Volvo, how do you view the connection between the automotive and architecture worlds?
Robin Page: Working in the luxury car sector and understanding how to bring exclusive and striking designs to life has been very interesting. My joining Volvo saw the start of an important phase in my career, as the company is undergoing great change. It’s always stimulating as a designer to be in a place that’s changing quickly, has a strong vision and is in a rush to get there. These aspects attracted me to the company. What's more, I now live in Sweden ‒ a country that’s always been on my influence boards for its excellent design philosophy. Being in Sweden enables me to add that 'Scandinavian touch' that has never been fully exploited at Volvo, I think. So it’s nice to connect with and be inspired by the regional design and architectural language as well.
>>> Finish reading at The Plan 87
Photography by IndyAutonomousChallenge - Politecnico di Milano, courtesy of Politecnico di Milano
