RobbertPatrison
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- Silicon Valley, California
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- Ice White Mustang Mach-E
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Co-Pilot360 ADAS (Advanced Driver-Assistance System) and BlueCruise uses many sensors:
- Forward-looking camera in the windshield, which does the lane detection. It likely also does pedestrian detection and tracking of other obstacles in front and plays a role in automatic evasive maneuvres.
- Forward-looking radar behind the front bumper measures the distance to the car in front for the adaptive cruise control. Likely it is also part of obstacle detection and emergency braking.
- Two side-looking radars in the rear bumper for blind-spot detection and rear cross-traffic alert. I suspect it also plays a role in rear obstacle detection and auto-braking while backing up.
- Two side-looking radars in the front bumper for front cross-traffic threat detection.
- Ultrasonic sensors in the front and rear bumper for the parking sensors. These only work on a short distance (a few feet) and at a very slow speed.
- Four more cameras: A forward camera in the bumper, a rear camera in the hatch, and side cameras in the mirrors. These only seem to be used for the 360-degrees view during parking at a very low speed. I suspect that they play no role while driving for lane detection or obstacle detection.
- A camera in the steering column that checks driver's attention.
So how well does it work?, and how close is this to a useful autopilot/co-pilot? I am checked out on the Garmin GFC-700 autopilot in a Cessna 172, and I have driven Volts and Bolts with more primitive drive-assist systems for many years. I also drove Teslas with 'Full Self Driving'. Here is my experience after 5 weeks of trying to do most driving with co-pilot360 and hands-free BlueCruise:
- The rear cross-traffic warning system is excellent. It warns for cars and people while backing out. This is way better than the Hella system in my Chevy Bolt.
- The forward adaptive cruise control is pretty good. It smoothly adapts to the traffic in front and does not over-accelerate when the traffic veers out of the lane. It also seems to understand curved lanes on the highway, latching on to the proper car.
- Adaptive cruise control in city streets and traffic jams works somewhat: it does brake to a full stop following the car in front, though a little less smooth than necessary. But if the car is initially far away it detects it too late leading to hard braking. Needless to say, it also does not detect traffic lights or stop signs, making it pretty much useless for city driving.
- Lane centering on highways is not good enough for the curvy and hilly highways here in Silicon Valley. It steers too late in the curve and sometimes oscillates a little. It does not know how to properly cut a corner on highways while using the free margin in the lane.
- Co-Pilot360 seems to be completely unaware of cars on the side or in the rear while lane-centering. It keeps the middle of the lane even when neighboring cars veer dangerously close into my lane. It clumsily tries to keep the middle of the lane all the time, oblivious of other traffic. You have to apply quite some force to override the centering if you want to correct the position to stay a little clear of trucks. This makes auto-pilot driving with any traffic an unnerving experience.
- Lane detection is remarkably poor. Granted, CalTrans is lousy at painting white lines, but Co-Polit360 still should do a lot better. On local roads, it misses the lane markers too often. You need to constantly overpower the lane-centering system to stay on the ideal path on local roads. On more than one occasion it spontaneously crossed the middle divider into the opposite lane while in lane-centering mode. With the mode off I deliberately crossed the lanes and in most cases do not get any warning. There seems to be no way to switch off lane-centering on local roads while keeping it enabled on highways...
- I could not find any indication that Co-Pilot 360 sees bicycles or objects on local roads. The stubborn lane-centering makes it pass cyclists on the road: way, way too close for comfort and safety. I suspect that the active safety system work, but in normal driving, one would hardly ever encounter them being activated.
- Hands-free BlueCruise driving is disappointing. Basically, BlueCruise is just hands-off lane-centering on highways. On hwy280 and hwy560 here in Silicon Valley, I was rarely more than 2 minutes in hands-free mode before being downgraded to hands-on lane-centering. Then 30 seconds later it is back on... Perhaps it does better on empty highways without curves and hills, but over here the experience is poor.
- Though it sounds cool, the automatic speed adjustment is not so useful in practice. The traffic sign detection sometimes misinterprets the speed signs, causing sudden slowdowns at limits that are only meant for trucks. Conversely, it sometimes starts accelerating at spots where it shouldn't. In any case, the speed change feels as an unwanted infererence.
- The 360-camera view is nice as a parking assist. It comes on automatic if the ultrasonic sensors detect an obstacle. I would prefer that switching it on manually would be a 1-button click, rather than 2. The ultrasonic park assist is shown on the 360-view. Rear auto-braking did not kick in erroneously yet, even though the way driving back out of my garage is a curvy obstacle course.
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, but I haven't had an issue negotiating corners. Also, road lines here are awful; I can't even make it out sometimes with my own eyes, but often BlueCruise "sees" the lines and maintains my lane. Also, I don't find it requires a significant amount of force to override the lane centering; perhaps it requires deliberate force, rather than a large amount. But yes, it should try to use other sensors to try to stay away from other cars that are driving too close to your lane.
