Ford using Ubuntu in its driverless car

La Mirada del Replicante reports that Ford is signing up for the revolution in driverless cars and there’s no-one better in whose company to do so than Tux and one of the most popular GNU/Linux distributions – Ubuntu.

It has therefore launched a development plan for the next 5 years in which it plans to achieve a higher level of connectivity in its next models and to improve the capabilities of detection and automatic driving technology.

Ford’s press release does not tell us what the hell the Ubuntu laptop connected to the car is doing, but it seems to be heavily involved in the autonomous driving system and the sensors entrusted with avoiding a possible collision.

This is not the only car with Ubuntu; we recently saw some Tesla electric cars hacked by Bosch which also showed the characteristic Unity interface favoured by Ubuntu.

In another vein, it will be interesting to see how these autonomous vehicles resolve certain ethical questions, such as having to choose at a certain time between sacrificing their driver by colliding with a tree or wiping out half a dozen innocent persons.

We shall see if that dilemma causes a kernel panic!