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Updates from March, 2012

  • Milford, Mich • General Motors will soon be introducing the 2013 Cadillac XTS, which the automaker is claiming will be the most technologically advanced production car the Cadillac brand has ever offered. The full sized-sedan will be equipped with advanced active safety and driver assistance systems that GM says are “a significant milestone toward the development of self-driving vehicles.”

    At GM’s Milford Proving Grounds outside of Detroit, I got a chance to experience what it’s like to leave the driving to a soulless machine, courtesy of a semi-autonomous SRX. It was part of a day highlighting Cadillac’s safety and crash avoidance technologies, both near term and further into the future — or, as summarized by John Capp, GM’s director of global active safety, electronics and innovation, going the next step from just alerting the driver of a dangerous situation to actually intervening if the driver can’t.

    Related

    Giving driving control over to a car doesn’t come naturally to someone who’s been driving for 40 years, but the SRX’s “SuperCruise” (as it’s being called internally) system proved eerily smooth and effective — at least on the proving ground’s high-banked circuit. Getting up to 100 kilometres an hour, setting the active cruise control and then activating SuperCruise via a steering wheel button is simplicity itself — lights on the steering wheel switch from blue to green to indicate the system is working. Taking one’s hands off the steering wheel is a whole different feeling. With the forward cameras reading the lane markings, the SRX tracked straight and true, never straying from its intended line. Other buttons on the steering wheel allow the SRX to shift left or right in half-metre increments depending on driver preference.

    As part of the demonstration, another car on the track deliberately slowed, activating the brakes as part of the adaptive cruise control system. Again, the SRX slowed to a safe distance, then accelerated as the car ahead picked up speed. And, again, it stayed exactly in the centre of the lane. A tap of the brakes deactivates SuperCruise, putting the SRX back under the control of the driver.

    The system is not nearly perfected, says Capp, but, the way the technology is progressing, it’s quite conceivable that SuperCruise could be an option on cars within five years — notwithstanding regulatory and legal issues. One impediment is weather: The cameras need to be able to read the lane markings. Conditions such as snow and even heavy rain could require the driver to take control.

    Of greater concern with any such system, says Capp, is keeping the driver engaged in the driving experience and not, in a kind of worst-case scenario, falling asleep behind the wheel.

    Cadillac also unveiled its new Safety Alert Seat, which will be offered on the XTS this spring. The luxury sedan will be the first car to use directional tactile sensation — vibrations of the driver’s seat bottom — to warn of crash threats while driving and parking.

    The seat generates vibrating pulse patterns on the left and/or right side of the lower bolster to alert the driver of potential dangers, such as drifting from a traffic lane or toward nearby objects while parking. Threats from the front and back trigger pulses on both sides of the seat. The seat works in conjunction with other visual alerts, focusing driver attention toward the direction of potential dangers.

    Trying out the seat in a variety of exercises, such as backing out of a parking spot into cross traffic and drifting left and right from the designated driving lane, quickly activated the pulsation, which got my attention faster than it would through other systems’ annoying buzzes, beeps and/or flashing lights.

    The Safety Alert Seat is part of the Cadillac Driver Awareness and Driver Assist packages, a combination of active safety systems designed to help drivers avoid crashes. The package includes Forward Collision Alert, lane departure warning, Side Blind Zone Alert and Rear Cross Traffic Alert.

    The Driver Assist Package, available this fall, also uses the Safety Alert Seat and features adaptive cruise control, Automatic Collision Preparation and front and rear automatic braking systems.


    8:00 am on March 28, 2012
     

  • Third eye on the road Ray Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns states that, as technology progresses, it evolves faster and faster. So, while consumers are just starting to warm up to Bluetooth and GPS as safe driving solutions, new technology has already arrived ready to shift the paradigm within the daily commute.

    Related

    The Mobileye 560 is an Advanced Driver Assistance System that combines a smart camera along with a visual display interface, which work together to measure distance to other vehicles, alert drivers to potential collisions, identify jaywalking pedestrians and signal unexpected lane closures. It’s a safety system that keeps an extra eye on the road, continually calculating the location and speed of other occupants and then reporting back via an icon system when danger is anticipated. It also uses Bluetooth to send visual alerts via a smartphone, and it can track driving performance to keep an eye on what teen drivers are doing to the car. If it all seems rather futuristic, that’s because it is. And, given the pace of technology, in about one year’s time, it likely won’t be. $850; visit mobileye.com.

    Garmin’s half-way to a tablet Dedicated GPS devices are in danger of extinction due to the rise of the tablet. But navigation manufacturer Garmin is doing a good job at staying current, introducing all sorts of features in its Nüvi 3590LMT, which mimics the contemporary trappings of the tablet crusaders. This five-inch touchscreen device is thin and introduces a very detailed 3D-rendered building view, with a responsive interface that allows users to pan around the map quickly for that ideal perspective. It has Bluetooth capability, and the built-in microphone serves as an input device to control this puppy via voice control. The 3590LMT is compatible with Garmin’s Smartphone Link for Android devices, which provides an array of services such as traffic information, traffic cameras, weather and fuel prices, all the while utilizing the Android device’s mobile data plan. We hope GPS hardware manufacturers move into the tablet business in the coming year, because they are already half-way there. Garmin should add email and provide a browser to poach Web service from the tethered Android device — then Bob’s your uncle. $399; visit garmin.com.


    9:00 am on January 21, 2012
     

  • Munich • Active safety is playing an increasingly more important role in the modern automobile. Electronic stability control (ESC) systems became standard fitment on all 2012 light-duty vehicles. The reason is not difficult to grasp when you look at the numbers.

    According to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), a vehicle equipped with ESC is 35% less likely to be involved in a crash. The U.S. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) goes further, suggesting that it cuts fatal crashes by 43% and the likelihood of a fatality due to a rollover by a whopping 77% to 80%! The next phase of active safety has to do with predicting an incident and then taking corrective action before it occurs.

    Audi has a number of systems, each of which is designed to reduce the risk of injury caused by a crash. The umbrella under which many of these systems reside is called Audi pre sense. It does exactly what its name implies — it looks for a potential incident and begins to take corrective action before the big bang occurs. The basic system uses the electronic stability control system. When the car begins to deviate from the driver’s intended line, the system turns on the hazard warning lights, closes the windows and sunroof (if open) and snugs up the seat belts, which pulls the riders back into their seats and readies them for the potential impact.

    Farther up the chain is pre sense front. This system uses the active cruise control and its ability to control the speed of the vehicle. Before taking charge, the system first attempts to draw the driver’s attention to the potential incident by giving visual and audible warnings. If the driver does nothing, it attempts to spur them to action by dabbing the brakes momentarily. If the driver still does nothing to avoid what is now a looming problem, the system applies up to 30% brake pressure to slow the vehicle, which reduces the severity of the impact.

    The top version, pre sense plus, goes one further by applying full brake pressure 0.5 seconds before the impact. In the real world, this action can take as much as 40 kilometres an hour off the impact speed, which dramatically reduces the severity of injury. Future pre sense generations will also look at the potential severity of the impact and tailor the seat belt pretensioners and air bag deployment to the type of impact.

    Beyond that, Audi is expanding its active safety portfolio by adding adaptive cruise control with stop and go. It uses a pair of radars that monitors the road ahead for 250 metres. It then controls the speed of the vehicle and the distance by which it tails the car ahead. The system works over the entire speed range (zero to 250 km/h) and it can bring the vehicle to a halt if that’s what the car ahead does. It is a truly freaky feeling letting a system prevent you from running into the back of a car.

    The next evolution will add a laser scanner (it can be likened to a very sophisticated bar code scanner). This debut is pre sense city. It allows the vehicle to track the car ahead and mimic what it does by not only controlling the gas and brakes but also by using the active steering system (part of Audi’s self-park system) to track the car ahead. Mercifully, it is smart enough not to follow the car if it does a hard right out of the lane.

    Audi’s lane departure warning system is also a little different. As well as vibrating the steering wheel when the driver begins to drift out of the lane, it, too, uses the active steering and a camera that monitors the lines to put the car back in the centre of the lane. It really does encourage the use of the turn signal — this cancels the action.

    Another future technology is a self-parking feature, and it goes well beyond anything offered today. Using a variety of sensors, the car actually parks itself without the driver being in the vehicle. Pull up outside the garage, open the door, get out and push a button on the key fob. The system then selects Drive and inches into the garage all by itself. When it senses the wall at the end of the garage, it stops, selects Park, shuts the engine down and applies the parking brake. It also closes any open window and locks the doors. The next morning, the driver simply pushes the same button and it backs out to a predetermined spot on the driveway. If at any time it detects an obstacle, it will stop and wait for the problem to clear. So, if little Johnny leaves his toy dump truck in the middle of the garage, it will not get bulldozed!

    The other demonstration of note was a system designed to ease the chore of backing an Audi up with a trailer in tow. The secret to the ability lies in a special tow hitch ball that measures the angle of the trailer relative to the car. It is very simple to use. When backing up, the driver uses the Multi-Media Interface’s central controller to guide the car, not the steering wheel. The system uses the active steering to dial in the inputs needed to put the trailer where the driver wants with uncanny precision. It turned a complete trailer-towing neophyte (me) into a trailer tow pro in less time than it took to read this description. All I did was control the speed of the car. What will they think of next!


    8:00 am on December 2, 2011