Device for avoiding a collision in a lane-change maneuver of a vehicle: It’s not quite KITT, the artificially intelligent Trans Am that starred alongside David Hasselhoff in the 1980s television show Knight Rider, but a newly patented computerized driving system takes a step toward the car as driving companion. Not only will it upbraid you when you are about to make a boneheaded lane change, it will actually take control of the steering wheel and prevent a collision.

The device, patent No. 7,893,89, was developed by a team of engineers at Germany’s Continental Corporation. It relies on cameras embedded in a car’s side mirrors. The cameras stream video to a computer, perhaps located behind the dashboard, equipped with object-recognition software that scans every 66 milliseconds for the shapes of approaching vehicles. Once it identifies a vehicle, the system tracks the approaching car’s changing geometric relation to other visual cues on the horizon to determine its approach speed and distance.

When a driver begins to make a turn into a neighboring lane that the computer believes will result in a collision, it delivers a warning message, “acoustically, visually or both in parallel,” says Stefan Lüke, the lead engineer on the project. If that warning is ignored, the computer will deliver another caution through vibrations in the steering wheel. It will then add additional resistance and finally apply countertorque to the steering column, effectively preventing the car from changing lanes. “It feels like driving against a wall,” Lüke says. “It will push you back into your lane.”

BMW recently debuted a system that tracks approaching vehicles using radar and applies a warning vibration to the steering column. But it does not have the capacity to push the car back into its lane. Lüke predicts that Continental’s version, which also works with radar, will appear in its first vehicle “within the year,” although he declines to name the model or car manufacturer that plans to deploy it.

The emergence of electromechanical steering systems, which are increasingly replacing traditional hydraulics in vehicles, makes such computerized interventions easier to implement. Meanwhile high-resolution cameras continue to drop in price, making the system more cost-effective, Lüke says. Soon all that will separate your average driver from the 1980s-era Michael Knight will be a “turbo boost” and a few cans of hair spray.

This article was originally published with the title Patent Watch.

11 Comments

1. 1. Gojira1974 01:29 PM 6/6/11

   This seems like a great idea until you consider what it can do to risk management in an emergency situation. You wish to avoid a head on collision with a school bus full of kids by colliding with a guide rail. The car simply prevents you from changing lanes to avoid an "accident." I'm not convinced I would want it to completely take over. I want the final say in what my car does.

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2. 2. Rob Hooft 03:29 PM 6/6/11

   @Gojira1974: You cite a very unlikely situation as a reason to stop progress..... in fact, 40000 humans that have the last say in what their car does die every year in the USA alone. Many of these casualties can be prevented using technologies like the one described here. I agree that it will be very difficult to overcome the moral difficulty because some weird kinds of accidents could theoretically result in more serious injuries because of an apparent misjudgment of a computer....

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3. 3. jtdwyer in reply to Rob Hooft 03:43 PM 6/6/11

   Perhaps the implementation of complex integrated processing systems might introduce additional system reliability issues. In that case, 'new' emergency conditions could be produced.
   
   I lost track - was the Toyota ever definitively determined to be the result of system errors or faulty sensors or was it just loose floor mats? I suspect that was all for the legal system to decide...

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4. 4. EyesWideOpen 03:54 PM 6/6/11

   I suspect it might come down to legal triage. If an individual attempts to avoid a head-on collision but cannot because in doing so they would collide with a guard rail (or side-swipe another vehicle), that might be considered one death vs. X-number of lives saved (where X=10 lives or greater). Therefore, each death is considered a necessary sacrifice for progress because each death theoretically saved 10 lives or greater. One life or ten lives? It's like the movie where terrorists tell a guy over a cell-phone "if you shoot your wife in the head, I will not press a trigger that will detonate a nuclear device in downtown Los Angeles. Make your choice: Your wife or a million lives? Make your choice now!"

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5. 5. tharter in reply to Gojira1974 04:45 PM 6/6/11

   Yeah, I'm with you there. A warning? That is great, I'm all for it, but there are simply going to be times when I'm going to want to ignore that warning. Plus I'm not actually convinced that any existing computer vision system is going to be 100% reliable. 99.9% maybe, but there will be that day when it is wrong, and I know it is wrong.

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6. 6. jbo83 11:00 PM 6/6/11

   I realize computers are not infallible but I would prefer to rely on the accuracy of the computer over my own admittedly faulty judgment when changing lanes, especially at night. Besides, override triage features could be built into the system so the computer chooses the least worst case scenario.

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7. 7. ssm1959 05:32 PM 6/7/11

   The idea of an acoustic and visual warnings are great. However in a case where I have the choice of sideswiping a neighboring vehicle to avoid had on accident I will do it every time. Will the computer understand what is happening in that instance, I seriously doubt it!

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8. 8. rwstutler 12:48 AM 6/8/11

   Drivers would have to have an overide switch or button.

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9. 9. bucketofsquid 09:19 AM 6/16/11

   Considering that Google has self driving cars with a zero accident rate, I find this less impressive than I would a few years ago. The side collision prevention would obviously be integrated with the front and rear collision avoidance that already exists.

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10. 10. Wind Borne 12:55 AM 7/28/11

    Warning the driver of an impending collision, including shaking the steeping wheel, is great. But overriding the driver's control is fraught with problems. Just imagine the opportunity for abuse. A malicious driver could force a car equipped with such a system off the road, over a cliff, or into a bridge abutment simply by making a feint towards the overly-clever car. And the poor driver-cum-passenger could do nothing to prevent their fiery death.

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11. 11. EyesWideOpen 01:48 PM 7/28/11

    And I thought I was paranoid, but sadly you've got a very good point. I've seen road rage where a driver would have just loved to do that to me!

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