raptor213
Elio Addict
The guys in my work breakroom were discussing this very topic over the weekend. First snowfall of the season hit metro Detroit and we were all debating how well modern driver assist/safety technologies might function in winter weather conditions.
When roadways are covered in slush or snow, rendering surface markings illegible, how would lane assist technologies work? Would adaptive cruise control systems account for contaminated road surfaces when determining safe following distances/intervals? Would driverless cars that navigate based upon a stored database of road maps adjust acceleration profiles and desired cruising speeds when surface conditions preclude normal acceleration to the posted speed limit? Can the cameras and sensors utilized in automatic parallel parking systems discern between a curb and snowbank?
While adaptive cruise control, automatic emergency braking in forward and reverse, automatic parallel parking, lane assist and other technologies are commonly packaged onto conventional vehicles in order to augment or enhance the regular driver experience, and those systems may always be overruled, overridden, or otherwise disabled/disengaged by a human operator, it does beg the question: how well do these systems function without a human operator in the loop to intervene?
Our entire discussion was rhetorical at best, given that my coworkers and I are not automotive engineers. Certainly, these questions were posed years ago by teams of thinkers who developed and tested viable solutions. The nerd in me would just like to know how it all works.
When roadways are covered in slush or snow, rendering surface markings illegible, how would lane assist technologies work? Would adaptive cruise control systems account for contaminated road surfaces when determining safe following distances/intervals? Would driverless cars that navigate based upon a stored database of road maps adjust acceleration profiles and desired cruising speeds when surface conditions preclude normal acceleration to the posted speed limit? Can the cameras and sensors utilized in automatic parallel parking systems discern between a curb and snowbank?
While adaptive cruise control, automatic emergency braking in forward and reverse, automatic parallel parking, lane assist and other technologies are commonly packaged onto conventional vehicles in order to augment or enhance the regular driver experience, and those systems may always be overruled, overridden, or otherwise disabled/disengaged by a human operator, it does beg the question: how well do these systems function without a human operator in the loop to intervene?
Our entire discussion was rhetorical at best, given that my coworkers and I are not automotive engineers. Certainly, these questions were posed years ago by teams of thinkers who developed and tested viable solutions. The nerd in me would just like to know how it all works.
