11 hours ago
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Ford patent claims that external sensors will monitor your car's surroundings at all times, ready for it to dodge a smash
Ford aims to make returning to your car to find someone has damaged it in a car park far less commonplace, with a patent that aims to give your parked car the ability to move autonomously to avoid an impact.
Ford originally filed U.S. patent number US-12617393-B2, titled “System for Detecting Moving Objects”, in December 2023, but only published the details on 5 May.
The patent itself details how a suite of sensors with the capacity to monitor moving objects around the car, from which they can extrapolate speeds and trajectories in order to assign a threat level for objects which may hit the car.
If the threat level triggers an evasion response, the vehicle will, where practical and safe, autonomously drive itself to avoid the impact.
The patent details how the vehicle would issue a warning first, by sounding the horn and flashing its lights. If an impact is unavoidable, the vehicle would activate all of its available camera systems to record the incident.
In theory, many of today's vehicles already have the hardware to do exactly this. Think Tesla's Sentry Mode, combined with a subset of its Full Self Driving technology. There are, however, significant legal issues to overcome.
A vehicle moving with no human supervision presents its own set of problems that we currently don't have the legal framework to answer. Who is liable if it then injures a person or damages property?
The patent is the brainchild of Ford engineers Erol Sumer, Smruti Panigrahi and Ehsan Arabi, and also floats the possibility of transmitting the potential impact scenario data via V2X (vehicle to everything) or V2V (vehicle to vehicle).
This then allows the car that is about to be impacted not only to communicate with the impacting vehicle, but also with other vehicles around it.
This could conceivably mean the vehicle could not only move out of the way of an incoming crash, but also communicate with nearby parked vehicles so they could autonomously move aside and create space for the vulnerable vehicle.
It's an intriguing scenario; a series of cars shuffling aside to avoid a potential collision.
What would have sounded like science fiction a decade ago is, according to Ford at least, now firmly within the bounds of feasibility.
Andy brings almost 30 years automotive writing experience to his role at Drive. When he wasn’t showing people which way the Nürburgring went, he freelanced for outlets such as Car, Autocar, and The Times. After contributing to Top Gear Australia, Andy subsequently moved Down Under, serving as editor at MOTOR and Wheels. As Drive’s Road Test Editor, he’s at the heart of our vehicle testing, but also loves to spin a long-form yarn.
