Ford today unveiled two impressive semi-autonomous research technologies at an event in Belgium. The first neat programming trick Ford revealed was a fully autonomous parking system, and the other was a collision-avoidance system that can actively steer around obstacles. Both feats are the result of Ford’s participation in interactIVe (Accident Avoidance by Active Intervention of Intelligent Vehicles), a European think tank devoted to safety tech of the future.
The parking skills Ford showed off aren’t breathtakingly tomorrowland—Audi showed off a similarly human-free self-parking car at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show—but it is still a neat evolution of Ford’s Active Park Assist setup, which buyers can have now. Active Park Assist is optional on several Ford models and can steer and throttle the car into perpendicular or parallel parking spaces; the driver modulates the brake and is prompted by the system to change between Drive and Reverse. Ford’s experimental Fully Assisted Parking Aid, on the other hand, manages all of the vehicle’s systems, from the throttle and the brake to the steering and gearchanges. You can see it work in the video below:
As does Active Park Assist, the enhanced version scans for suitable spaces while the driver steers past parking areas. When an acceptable spot is identified, the car alerts the driver, who initiates the system. With Fully Assisted Parking, the driver can initiate the system, exit the vehicle, and at the push—and hold—of a key-fob button, the car navigates into the space. Overall, it’s not unlike Audi’s system, except in the Ford, the driver needs to be present until the spot is found; Audi’s setup also has the ability to unleash the car (sans driver) into Wi-Fi–equipped parking structures or lots to find a spot on its own.
Unlike Ford’s fully automated parking gear, which is essentially an evolution of an existing platform, the automaker’s Obstacle Avoidance tech is pretty much all new. The system uses three radar sensors, ultrasonic sensors, and a camera to scan as far as 650 feet ahead of the vehicle to detect obstacles. If one is detected, and the system thinks you’re going to hit it, a warning sounds in the cabin. If this goes unheeded, Obstacle Avoidance intervenes, slowing and or steering the car around the object. Of course, the system also makes sure nothing is in the car’s blind spot or on either side of the object ahead.
- Instrumented Test: 2013 Ford C-Max Hybrid
- Instrumented Test: 2013 Ford Explorer Sport
- Instrumented Test: 2013 Ford Fusion 1.6L EcoBoost Automatic
Nissan recently unveiled a similar automated emergency-steering system, and while neat, we figure it’ll be a while before such systems get the go-ahead for production. Besides meeting safety regulations, automakers like Ford need to be sure such systems, when activated, won’t steer the car into greater danger than it originally was on a path toward. On the other hand, Ford’s Fully Assisted Parking experiment could see the light of day sooner rather than later—we figure that so long as a car has Ford’s existing suite of nearly self-parking sensors and software, electronically assisted steering, throttle and brake by wire, and an electronically managed transmission, it has the goods to park itself. We maintain that every driver should know how to park, as well as have the good sense to pay attention to the road ahead—two simple pieces of attentiveness that negate the need for the added weight, cost, and engineering time required for semi-autonomous systems like these—but the future, lazy customers, and the automakers are ensuring a different outcome.
Source: CarAndDriver
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