Truck testing is hard. And it's supposed to be. Automakers have to cram hundreds of thousands of rigorous miles into a few months. But while the trucks are designed to take a pounding, their flesh-and-blood drivers aren't. So Ford is employing robots and autonomous tech to mitigate the drudgery, while making its testing procedures more accurate, less time consuming, and safer.

Ford partnered with Utah-based Autonomous Solutions Inc. to create a combination of hardware, software, and autonomous technology to remove the humans from the equation, allowing the automaker to test its new full-size Transit van along its Michigan Proving Grounds in Romeo 24/7/365.

“Some of the tests we do on our commercial trucks for North America are so strenuous that we limit the exposure time for human drivers,” says Dave Payne, Ford manager of vehicle development operations. “The challenge is completing testing to meet vehicle development timelines while keeping our drivers comfortable. Robotic testing allows us to do both."

And it's accurate. Really accurate. With cameras, sensors, and GPS controlling every facet of the truck, Ford says it can dial movement down to plus-or-minus one inch.

If the vehicle strays from the pre-programmed route, engineers at HQ can stop the vehicle remotely and put it back on course, and if another vehicle – or more likely, an animal – jumps out onto the track, the truck automatically stops in its tracks.

The proving grounds have the ability to cram 10 years of daily abuse into hundreds of yards of metal grates, broken concrete, potholes, cobblestones, and speed bumps. For safety reasons, human drivers were only able to perform the tests once a day, but now engineers can run the tests as many times as they please until they get the desired result.

But don't feel too bad for the drivers. They've been assigned to assess everything from noise levels to vehicle dynamics testing, so no humans were handed a pink slip in the process.

And now that the human factor has been removed from the equation, that's going to allow Ford's engineers to design even more strenuous torture tests that can further reduce the amount of time it takes to bring a new vehicle to market.

Photos and video courtesy of Ford.