Sandy Munro checks out Ford's BlueCruise

[Stang68]

Oh feel free to judge me all you want. It's the internet. Just to be extremely clear, I don't stare at the weight, just the road...

What else would we use the internet for? ?

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[dmasteR]

 

[Clydesdale]

Watching it a second time, it’s pretty clear that the engineer says “it’s going to ask you to put your hands on the steering wheel”. Essentially, to have the driver be ready IF things go wrong…

Seems that if it was expected to fully disengage in this scenario, he would have said something like “it’s asking you to take control”. Which it did not.

His later comments about it wanting to be sure your being safe, just makes it seem like they want you to cover the wheel in case things do get out of control. I.e, there’s a higher likelihood of danger on a tight curve so be prepared.

What I am curious about is what happens if the request to put hands on the wheel are ignored. Would it continue to drive through the curve? It must, right? It’s not exactly the right setting to disengage intentionally for bad behavior.

 

[Clydesdale]

Watching it a second time, it’s pretty clear that the engineer says “it’s going to ask you to put your hands on the steering wheel”. Essentially, to have the driver be ready IF things go wrong…

Seems that if it was expected to fully disengage in this scenario, he would have said something like “it’s asking you to take control”. Which it did not.

His later comments about it wanting to be sure your being safe, just makes it seem like they want you to cover the wheel in case things do get out of control. I.e, there’s a higher likelihood of danger on a tight curve so be prepared.

What I am curious about is what happens if the request to put hands on the wheel are ignored. Would it continue to drive through the curve? It must, right? It’s not exactly the right setting to disengage intentionally for bad behavior.

Oh shoot, see above post with tweet from Mike Levine… I guess I was wrong. Still doesn’t seem right though.

 

[MTNestr]

Oh feel free to judge me all you want. It's the internet. Just to be extremely clear, I don't stare at the weight, just the road...

I know exactly what you mean. When I drive with a weight (or normally without one) I tend to pay even more attention to what my Mach-E is doing than I do when hands free Is off. I doubt if I will ever fully trust hands free. But I do like the tech of hands free and that’s why I will continue to use hands free.

 

[Mach-Lee]

What I'm wondering is if BlueCruise is predictive or reactive. Reactive is much simpler to program, it just moves the car left or right until it's in the centered between the lines but has many limitations. Predictive is much more difficult, but means the car knows the exact path it will take ahead of time and steers to follow the path.

Based on what I've seen, I'm wondering if BlueCruise is really only a reactive system right now. That would mean it has trouble with sharp curves, because it would only detect a shift in lane position, but it would be faster than it can correct. Likewise it will also have trouble coming out of the turn which would be seen as a shift the opposite way. I've seen some goofy behavior in the videos where it comes out of turns and bounces off the lines for a few cycles. I don't think it can "see" where the turn starts and ends, only that your lane position has shifted. Imagine if you could only see the lines 20' in front of your car (like if you were in dense fog) and trying to drive on a curvy road at 60 mph. You'd have no anticipation of curves ahead and would be all over the place trying to follow the lines with little time to react. Therefore I don't think any amount of programming will make reactive tracking work to an acceptable level for completely hands-free driving.

Predicative is really the only way to go, but requires the car to be spatially aware. The car has to "see" the curve ahead, plot a course, decide if it needs to slow down, and execute the plan on time. This is how humans drive. It sounds like this is coming in the future with the Speed Assist function, but I think the first release of BlueCruise is really just glorified lane centering with driver monitoring added, and geofenced to controlled access freeways. Indiana Jones mode might be just as good for the time being...

 

[JoeDimwit]

What I'm wondering is if BlueCruise is predictive or reactive. Reactive is much simpler to program, it just moves the car left or right until it's in the centered between the lines but has many limitations. Predictive is much more difficult, but means the car knows the exact path it will take ahead of time and steers to follow the path.

Based on what I've seen, I'm wondering if BlueCruise is really only a reactive system right now. That would mean it has trouble with sharp curves, because it would only detect a shift in lane position, but it would be faster than it can correct. Likewise it will also have trouble coming out of the turn which would be seen as a shift the opposite way. I've seen some goofy behavior in the videos where it comes out of turns and bounces off the lines for a few cycles. I don't think it can "see" where the turn starts and ends, only that your lane position has shifted. Imagine if you could only see the lines 20' in front of your car (like if you were in dense fog) and trying to drive on a curvy road at 60 mph. You'd have no anticipation of curves ahead and would be all over the place trying to follow the lines with little time to react. Therefore I don't think any amount of programming will make reactive tracking work to an acceptable level for completely hands-free driving.

Predicative is really the only way to go, but requires the car to be spatially aware. The car has to "see" the curve ahead, plot a course, decide if it needs to slow down, and execute the plan on time. This is how humans drive. It sounds like this is coming in the future with the Speed Assist function, but I think the first release of BlueCruise is really just glorified lane centering with driver monitoring added, and geofenced to controlled access freeways. Indiana Jones mode might be just as good for the time being...

You would think that the whole point of having mapped roads only is that it can drive predictively as a baseline, and use onboard sensors to add a reactive layer on top of that.

 

[JoeDimwit]

That should be a good one to test. That's going to be a tough one with the curves at Harper and again at Shook in such a close sequence before you get to 16 mile.

I worded that poorly. I will be driving I-75 North from I-94 to M-59. So I’ll go through the curves between 8 and 9 mile, the one at Big Beaver, and the two in this video.

 

[Eraser]

I'm sticking to my guns, the system did not pass control back to the driver. Based on what we actually saw on video and Mike Levine's comments, I think he is incorrect here. Maybe there are scenarios where Blue Cruise will do what he states, but that clearly didn't happen here.

 

[troublebot]

I'm sticking to my guns, the system did not pass control back to the driver. Based on what we actually saw on video and Mike Levine's comments, I think he is incorrect here. Maybe there are scenarios where Blue Cruise will do what he states, but that clearly didn't happen here.

There's the possibility that there would be legal and regulatory ramifications if he said "BlueCruise will steer through the curve" and it, for whatever reason, decides not to and someone spears into another car or a barrier. Opposite tack from Tesla, perhaps? Keep expectations low to keep the regulators and lawsuits at bay. Under-promise, over-deliver.

At the end of the day, BlueCruise will work until it decides it can't, so if Levine is wrong here, there's no real harm. There probably aren't a ton of people making a Mach-E purchase decision based solely on BlueCruise, and surely not from a Sandy Munro video alone...and it's not like they're having a tough time selling them anyway.

Once the Beta is out there, we'll have much better videos showing what BC is capable of.

 

[RedStallion]

I’m not even talking about Tesla. My God you guys are insane with the company. Who gives a shit what they are doing, their CEO is a lying Silicon Valley d-bag.

When it comes to BC, we can’t deny this was a really bad demo. Sure blame the maps it’s basing that curve approach on but either way BC couldn’t handle it in its current form and the Ford engineer sitting there said so. I’m still signing up for BC but this was shit. My only saving grace right now is the other early hands-on articles. Those were all overwhelmingly positive.

The demo was bad for different reasons. Munro didn't know what he was doing and what was happening. When BC showed "hands on the wheel" it didn't disengage the intelligent cruise as Munro suggested. And the Ford engineer either didn't see, or was unprepared and basically uttered some excuse to the effect that the system wasn't ready. Munro being a Tesla fanboy proceeded to passively-aggressively lambast BC trying to make a point how much better Tesla is.
Ultimately it's a Ford's blunder. You shouldn't ask a biased individual to "review" your technology, especially when it's fresh from the oven and possibly buggy and even worse when you don't control the experiment.

 

[RedStallion]

What I'm wondering is if BlueCruise is predictive or reactive.

Every such system is predictive because it calculates the future trajectory. It might be a high certainty for the next few feet and a low certainty for the next hundred feet. If you specify the margin of error, there will be a cone of possible trajectories. Every such system is reactive, the calculations are updated in real time with data coming from the sensors.

 

[MTNestr]

Is Blue Cruise speed sensitive?

 

[AllenXS]

Of course Tesla fsd is super perfect.
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/...oftware-update-not-great/?ftag=CAD-03-10abf2b

 

[dmasteR]

I’m not even talking about Tesla. My God you guys are insane with the company. Who gives a shit what they are doing, their CEO is a lying Silicon Valley d-bag.

When it comes to BC, we can’t deny this was a really bad demo. Sure blame the maps it’s basing that curve approach on but either way BC couldn’t handle it in its current form and the Ford engineer sitting there said so. I’m still signing up for BC but this was shit. My only saving grace right now is the other early hands-on articles. Those were all overwhelmingly positive.

I don't get the weird obsession that people have on this forum with Tesla. Coming from a Audi, no one ever mentions BMW / Benz on the enthusiasts forums.

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