Why the MME advanced cruise control system is not reacting on stationary objects ahead?

[ChuckA]

The real question is if BlueCruise is usefull enough to justify a $600 renewal? For me, it isn’t!

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[Rt1AWD]

The real question is if BlueCruise is usefull enough to justify a $600 renewal? For me, it isn’t!

$600 for 3 years ..... $17 per month..... being able to relax on the highway...... It certainly is

 

[ChuckA]

$600 for 3 years ..... $17 per month..... being able to relax on the highway...... It certainly is

Maybe in CA, not in CT. Anyway, I always keep my hands on the steering wheel. Intelligent Cruise Control is good enough for me.

Maybe if renewal was $200 per year, I’d feel differently. I’m a retired person living on my 200.5(k).

 

[Mach-Lee]

I don't want to be able to rely on the system, I just want to use it.... It just seems a little annoying that I have to intervene in a straightforward situation that should be handled by BC in my opinion

Just because you think it should handle it doesn't mean it's technically possible to do. It's not possible with the technology on the car. It's the same way on other brands of cars with adaptive cruise control. Buy a Tesla with AI-based vision FSD if you want to auto-stop behind cars at lights.

You HAVE to manually brake when you don't see the car ahed icon. Even relying on it below 30 MPH is risky, if a car turns off right before you get there it might not acquire the next car ahead in time. Understand that it's a "follow me" system so you need to be locked on a car ahead coming up to a stop light in order to stop automatically. If the car in front of you turns or changes lanes, you should always manually brake.

 

[ab13]

The autopilot clearly Identifies a stationary object ahead on the second picture

And that distance is about 1 block away, not far away. If the object wasn't moving it might ignore it. These are 1.2 megapixel camera, not anything "high res".

Here's one of the articles pointing out the NHTSA investigation on autopilot. It has phantom braking which means it sometimes sees things and sometimes doesn't. Part of the reason stationary objects may be ignored, especially if they appear outside of the lane. You assume the computer vision is 100% correct, but that's the point, it isn't and makes errors.

https://www.autoblog.com/2022/06/09/nhtsa-investigation-tesla-phantom-braking/

 

[RickMachE]

The real question is if BlueCruise is usefull enough to justify a $600 renewal? For me, it isn’t!

Actually, not the real question.

BlueCruise is handsfree driving. This is regular cruise that you don't pay extra for...

 

[gsmith45]

I've worked on these systems, so can provide an answer to the original question.

Ford's ICC is a "Comfort and Convenience" feature, not a safety feature. It uses radar doppler to some extent to isolate which "targets" are moving versus those which are stationary and can then identify and track moving targets (i.e. usually other vehicles). So if you're following another vehicle and it brakes down to a stop, then the system can track the other vehicle all the way to a stop.

On the other hand, if you suddenly come across a stationary vehicle in your path of travel, the radar will generally ignore it because it's indistinguishable from the background from a doppler perspective. That's the way it's meant to behave (see user manual).

Separately to this, there is an Emergency Braking system, which uses the camera behind the rear mirror, which CAN respond to obstacles directly ahead, but only in the very last seconds before collision.

This is a fairly common implementation across different manufacturers (apart from Tesla), because they all source their parts from the same suppliers. However there are many new systems out there in development that you will read about that will have broader functionality and more capability, so sit tight and you'll have all this in a few more years as we get the first steps towards self-driving vehicles.

 

[newmme]

Buy a Tesla with AI-based vision FSD if you want to auto-stop behind cars at lights.

Actually, I just learned today from @Guss-E 2021 that GM Super Cruise can also drive in the city with stop lights and stop signs. Pretty cool.

https://www.macheforum.com/site/threads/bluecruise-v1-is-a-let-down.19081/post-457062

 

[Rt1AWD]

Ford's ICC is a "Comfort and Convenience" feature, not a safety feature. It uses radar doppler to some extent to isolate which "targets" are moving versus those which are stationary and can then identify and track moving targets (i.e. usually other vehicles). So if you're following another vehicle and it brakes down to a stop, then the system can track the other vehicle all the way to a stop.

It is not about safety, it is mostly about convenience. From safety standpoint you always have to pay attention, and if you do, you will never hit the stationary car that you can see from far away.
It is just not convenient that in some cases the car behaves normally approaching the crossing and in some not.

 

[devmach-e]

It is not about safety, it is mostly about convenience. From safety standpoint you always have to pay attention, and if you do, you will never hit the stationary car that you can see from far away.
It is just not convenient that in some cases the car behaves normally approaching the crossing and in some not.

Life is inconvenient all the time. I’m sorry that you find it inconvenient that the car refuses to behave in a manner that it is incapable of doing so. That’s life. You have two choices: live with it, or sell the car and get something else.

 

[jbooth]

Isn't the pesky problem really just physics? I haven't ever gutted a radar sensor, but I don't get the impression they are any sort of scanning system (no pixels, just time-of-arrival-and-frequency-shift). So the whole detection process is like echolocation, not imaging like a scanned camera sensor (/ your eyes). Since the radar sensors are generally arrayed horizontally, that'd give you distance (timing), relative speed (dopplar shift) and horizontal angle (timing between multiple sensors), but no inclination/declination angle information.

Without the inclination, if the system wasn't programmed to ignore things moving at "road speed" then it'd have a bad habit of activating when a bump in the road (like a slightly lifted section of concrete pavement, or a nice level railway crossing) reflected enough signal to look like a stopped car.

... which now makes me wonder if you could have "fun" gluing some corner reflectors to the back of your bumper... or on a bike and suddenly become REALLY VISIBLE to a radar cruise system.

 

[Mach-Lee]

Isn't the pesky problem really just physics? I haven't ever gutted a radar sensor, but I don't get the impression they are any sort of scanning system (no pixels, just time-of-arrival-and-frequency-shift). So the whole detection process is like echolocation, not imaging like a scanned camera sensor (/ your eyes). Since the radar sensors are generally arrayed horizontally, that'd give you distance (timing), relative speed (dopplar shift) and horizontal angle (timing between multiple sensors), but no inclination/declination angle information.

Without the inclination, if the system wasn't programmed to ignore things moving at "road speed" then it'd have a bad habit of activating when a bump in the road (like a slightly lifted section of concrete pavement, or a nice level railway crossing) reflected enough signal to look like a stopped car.

... which now makes me wonder if you could have "fun" gluing some corner reflectors to the back of your bumper... or on a bike and suddenly become REALLY VISIBLE to a radar cruise system.

Not sure what the Mach-E uses, but the newer phased array sensors can steer the beam in both azimuth and elevation. This allows the radar to follow a car ahead up and down a hill, determine the height of objects (e.g. semi vs. car vs. bump) and also detect the curb or road edge.

 

[gpgrim]

Not sure what the Mach-E uses, but the newer phased array sensors can steer the beam in both azimuth and elevation. This allows the radar to follow a car ahead up and down a hill, determine the height of objects (e.g. semi vs. car vs. bump) and also detect the curb or road edge.

Meh the micro-RADAR tech, developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is so last decade, now days its all about LIDAR.

 

[Rt1AWD]

Seems like at 25 mph the car always captures a stationary car ahead

 

[Scooby24]

Seems like at 25 mph the car always captures a stationary car ahead

Forward collision avoidance does.

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