Volvo Details New AstaZero ‘Flexible’ Proving Ground

Volvo has detailed its new ‘flexible’ proving ground, as its latest step in a campaign to see no deaths or serious injuries in a new Volvo by 2020.

The Swedish carmaker claims the new facility, called AstaZero (Active Safety Test Area), is the world’s first full-scale proving ground for “future traffic safety solutions”. 

AstaZero is located close to Volvo’s HQ in western Sweden, and can be transformed to simulate everything from a rural back road to an inner city environment.

Volvo will use the new facility primarily to test its current and future active safety systems, including autonomous emergency braking, car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure (V2V and V2I) technology and fully self-driven vehicles.

Detecting animals, pedestrians, motorcyclists and cyclists will be a focus of the testing program, with Volvos in some instances being driven by robots.