Big Carmakers Merge, Cautiously, Into the Self-Driving Lane

The New York Times

When General Motors starts selling a new Cadillac sedan next year, it plans to equip the car with G.M.’s answer to Tesla Motors’ Autopilot.

Like Autopilot, G.M.’s SuperCruise feature will be designed to steer a car for long stretches of highway driving, pass other vehicles, brake for traffic, speed up and change lanes — all with minimal effort by the driver.

The monitoring system, which analyzes images of the drivers’ eyes and head to tell if they are looking forward, will notice if drivers are drowsy, looking down at their cellphones or have turned to reach into the rear seat.

There is one thing the G.M. system will force drivers to do, though, that Tesla’s system does not: keep their eyes on the road.

Unlike Tesla, G.M. has chosen to place a camera, near the rearview mirror, that monitors the driver’s actions.

Along with other mainstream automakers cautiously rolling out Autopilot-like capabilities, G.M. is unwilling to assume that human drivers will — or even can — be trusted to remain safely engaged in the vehicle’s operation.

The big carmakers hope to avoid the criticism that has enveloped Tesla’s Autopilot — that the driver-assistance technology can lull the person behind the wheel into a mind-wandering sense of false security.

“Through the driver’s eyes, you can detect his or her level of attention,” Mark Reuss, G.M.’s executive vice president for global product development, said in July at an auto technology conference in Detroit.

The monitoring system, which analyzes images of the drivers’ eyes and head to tell if they are looking forward, will notice if drivers are drowsy, looking down at their cellphones or have turned to reach into the rear seat.

If the driver does not turn back to the road after a few seconds, warning tones and lights go off. If the driver does not respond, SuperCruise can slow or stop the car, Mr. Reuss said.

Audi, the German luxury carmaker, plans to add similar driver-monitoring technology next year when an upgraded version of its driver-assistance technology is offered in the 2018 A8 sedan.

“The car will see the driver’s condition and be able to say, ‘O.K., you’re paying attention and alert,’ and then it can be engaged,” said Brad Stertz, Audi’s director of government affairs.

As an added safeguard, the G.M. and Audi systems will work only on divided highways whose curves and exits have been plotted on digital maps, which enables cars to track their precise location on the road and on the three-dimensional surrounding terrain. The systems will also recognize objects like overpasses and road signs.

Outside those digitally mapped areas — on winding country roads, say, or uncharted city streets — G.M.’s SuperCruise and Audi’s Traffic Jam Pilot will not operate.

Such precautions are intended to prevent the kind of accident that has put Tesla and Autopilot under heavy scrutiny in the last few months.

Read more of the original article at The New York Times.

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