Skip to main content

Future Fords may steer owners out of traffic jams

Ford Traffic Jam AssistIf Ford has its way, self-driving cars will not arrive spontaneously, they will gradually evolve out of existing technologies. Ford currently equips cars with Active Park Assist, which can parallel park by itself. Future generations of the system will also be able to perpendicular park, and drive through traffic jams autonomously.

Ford says it already has the technology to make this happen. Active Park Assist can parallel park a car by using ultrasonic sensors to measure the length and width of a space. It then steers the car into the space with the car’s electric power steering, which is already controlled by a computer.

“Drive-by-wire” controls like electric power steering are not connected to anything; sensors read control inputs and translate them into actions.

“Drive-by-wire” throttles and brakes, along with radar, allow Ford vehicles with adaptive cruise control to automatically speed up and slow down with traffic.

According to Ford, these systems were the hardest part of making an autonomous car. Now that cars can steer themselves and slow down or speed up automatically, the machines are in control.

Active Park Assist and adaptive cruise control are available on numerous Ford and Lincoln models, including the Ford Taurus, Ford Explorer, and Lincoln MKT. These technologies will be the basis for even more autonomous features.

A new version of Active Park Assist will allow cars to perpendicular park by themselves. The new system will work the same way: the driver presses a button, the car beeps when it finds a suitable spot, then the driver shifts into reverse and modulates speed with the brakes while the car steers itself.

By 2017, Ford also hopes to have a system that can navigate traffic jams without human input. Like Active Park Assist and adaptive cruise control, Traffic Jam Assist would use sensors to keep the car where it should be, and use the electric steering, throttle, and brakes to make corrections.

So far, Traffic Jam Assist will only work with Ford’s Powershift dual-clutch transmission; it isn’t configured to work with a regular automatic or, for obvious reasons, a manual. Non-torque converter transmissions tend to be less smooth in low-speed driving, but the Powershift’s computer-actuated cog swaps might make it easier to integrate into this HAL 9000 of cruise controls.Ford Traffic Jam Assist simulation

Ford views Traffic Jam Assist as an auto pilot for one of the most annoying parts of a commuter’s day, and the company thinks it will alleviate congestion. In a Ford-sponsored simulation, delays were reduced by one-fifth when one-quarter of the cars had Traffic Jam Assist.

Ford isn’t the only car company to try to tackle congestion. Honda is working on an anti-congestion system. However, the Japanese company’s solution is less high-tech: it uses a color-coded display to warn drivers when they are behaving in a way that increases congestion, and rates their performance. Think of the glowing ball or leaf displays in hybrids, and you’ve got the idea.

Honda and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are also looking at vehicle-to-vehicle, or “V2V” systems that allow cars to communicate with each other and move as a pack.

The merits of self-driving cars are still being debated, but it looks like the technologies needed to make them already exist.

Editors' Recommendations

Stephen Edelstein
Stephen is a freelance automotive journalist covering all things cars. He likes anything with four wheels, from classic cars…
GM requests green light to ditch steering wheel in its self-driving cars
General Motors Cruise autonomous car design without steering wheel.

Meet the Cruise AV Self-Driving Car

Climb into a self-driving car today and there’ll be a steering wheel right there where you’d expect, and probably a backup driver, too, ready to step in should something go awry during the journey. Not for long.

Read more
Ford’s self-driving car testing program heads to Austin
ford self driving cars testing in austin texas a v

Ford is taking its autonomous car testing program to the Lone Star State. Austin, Texas, is the latest testing location for Ford's prototype self-driving cars, joining Detroit, Pittsburgh, Miami, and Washington, D.C. Ford's ultimate goal is to get an autonomous car into production within the next few years.

Ford chose Austin because of the city's liberal attitude toward self-driving cars, and its dense population, which will provide business opportunities for the use of autonomous cars, Sherif Marakby, Ford's autonomous-vehicle boss, wrote in a blog post. Ford wants to develop the business case for self-driving cars as it develops the technology itself. In Austin, the automaker will run business pilot programs, similar to what it has done in other cities with companies like Domino's and Postmates. Ford will build its first self-driving cars for commercial fleets, not retail sales.

Read more
Ford squashes the bug problem plaguing autonomous cars
ford found a way to keep bugs off autonomous car sensors bug washer

Self-driving cars are supposed to change the way we get around, but before they can do that, engineers have to solve a lot of problems related to them. Like what to do about bugs -- the insect kind, not glitches. For human drivers, a bug-splattered vehicle is pretty inconsequential. But autonomous cars rely on an array of sensors to "see" their environment, and those sensors need to be kept clean of insects. So Ford came up with a way to bug-proof its cars' sensors.

Figuring out how to keep self-driving cars' sensors clean turned out to be messy work. Engineers built a "bug launcher" to shoot insects at the sensors, Venky Krishnan, Ford's autonomous vehicle systems core supervisor, wrote in a blog post. They eventually settled on the "tiara" -- the structure on the roof of Ford's test cars that houses the collection of cameras, radar, and Lidar that make up the sensor suite -- as the main line of defense.

Read more