Ford says it’s the first automaker to have people in a driverless vehicle.
Miles and Shelby look like stocky men wearing black pants and black shoes. They’re armed with a special tablet.
Image caption Shelby is the driver’s tablet. It displays what the car sees and what the driver sees. Shelby is also a laser scanner.
They sit facing one another. Shelby’s tablet is angled down toward the cabin to give Miles easy access to objects and obstacles. Shelby also serves as a laser scanner.
“Shelby is the control center for this vehicle,” says Bryan Neumann, director of Ford Research and Advanced Engineering. “She’s got all the sensors on her tablet. She’s looking for obstacles. She’s looking for traffic. And she’s trying to keep us all in the vehicle at all times.”
The driver sits in a normal seat. If the vehicle starts to go sideways, the driver stops it.
Even with the autopilot, the driver is required to wear a seat belt and has to use a key to open the car and to access the cabin.