Ford testing self-parking, pedestrian-aware cars
Experimental Focus showcases auto parking and crash avoidance; replicating road rage remains a challengeFord is the latest company to strike success with an on-board system that can park a car without human intervention.
The manufacturer has released a video showing a Focus finding its own way into a parking spot and also avoiding obstacles in front. Equipped with 'Fully Assisted Parking' and 'Obstacle Avoidance' systems, the Focus prototypes are the result of a project aimed at refining existing technologies – Active Park Assist and the PowerShift dual-clutch transmission – to provide a level of autonomous driving.
The parking system is not a new idea – Volvo has also been working towards the same outcome with a V40 – but Ford's involvement promises to bring such technology to mass-market cars in the near term. Ford's system can be enabled from inside or outside the car and controls steering, gear selection and brakes.
"The future for Ford means developing innovative products and technologies – including Fully Assisted Parking Aid and Obstacle Avoidance – that help deliver a safer, more convenient, more desirable, more personalised and greener driving and ownership experience," said Barb Samardzich, Ford's European Product Development vice president.
Obstacle Avoidance is a safety feature using much the same equipment to avoid impacts with pedestrians and inanimate objects by steering or braking. In the first instance the car warns the driver of an impending impact, but then takes control if the driver makes no effort to avoid the collision. It's an idea recently dismissed by Mercedes-Benz on the grounds that emergency braking to avoid an object in front involves far fewer complications than steering around the object. Ford, as a member of a consortium working on such systems, is either foolhardy enough to step in where Mercedes-Benz has feared to tread, or it has come up with a practical solution that has previously escaped the three-pointed star's attention.
Both the Ford systems, in production, will inevitably take a lot of stress out of daily driving. But the manufacturer is yet to develop an automatic feature to make obscene gestures or scream outrageous accusations at fellow road users.
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