Valerie Plant open to autonomous cars

Cassandra Forcier-Martin

Sunday 4 February 2018 20:39

UPDATE
Sunday 4 February 2018 20:39

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The mayor of Montreal, Valerie Plant, intends to offer the streets of the metropolis in companies intelligent cars who want to test their racing cars.

Bill 165, which will give the green light to the use of this type of vehicle in the context of pilot projects, has been deposited and it could be adopted this spring. Mrs. Plante is in communication with the provincial government. She met with the prime minister Philippe Couillard.

“It must be aligned with the government of Quebec, at the level of legislation, but it remains that there are projects. However, they will be done in a closed circuit at the beginning,” says the mayor.

Montreal coveted

“Several manufacturers have shown interest to develop projects in Montreal. Now, the technology must adapt to conditions that are more extreme, and we, what we have to offer, it is the winter,” says the director general of the industrial cluster of the vehicle technology and intelligent, Sarah Houde.

This is our nordic climate that attracts companies to come and test their cars in more difficult conditions. By contrast, travel on the island of Montreal is not always obvious. Barriers to road potholes, and orange cones are numerous. To all this we must add the ice and the snow.

A playground of interesting or dangerous?

“You need to be able to make decisions, for example I’m at a light and there is a police officer who made the traffic, is that I have to follow the light or is it that I have to call the police? Therefore, there are a lot of algorithms of decision-making to manage, but if we do not confront the autonomous vehicles in this kind of situation, we will not think of coding them properly,” explains the project coordinator at the Institute of the innovative vehicle, Stéphane Pascalon.

The majority of the cars are equipped with sensors and cameras installed at the front of the car to follow the white lines. With the roadways of snow and ice, how are they going to find?

“There’s geolocation, which can be made, there may be intelligent infrastructures, in other words, we can build roads, lights, etc, which will emit signals that the car will be able to analyze. Ultimately, there will be an exchange vehicle-to-vehicle”, emphasizes Mr. Pascalon.