Although the cars aren't scheduled to hit the road until next year, Volvo sees this as the beginning of the project, which will be run in Gothenburg with special "hands-off and feet-off" zones allowing for full autonomous use.

The carmaker has been at the forefront of the autonomous driving revolution, most recently in partnering with Uber to ferry passengers around in self-driving taxis and in trialing a self driving truck in an underground mine.

For the Drive Me trial, Volvo XC90 SUVs are being fitted with a variety of sensors, including LiDAR, radar and traditional cameras. The information from the source sensors is then brought together by a powerful computer that Volvo calls the Autonomous Driving Brain in a process called data fusion. The fused data is used to inform the actions that the cars take.