How it works?
It can help drivers to keep their vehicles in the middle of the road and also accelerates and brakes so that it maintains speed with the vehicle directly ahead of it. This is just one of the semi-autonomous technologies being developed by Ford right now to help drivers. Here's how it works:
- Traffic Jam Assist gets activated with the push of a button. It uses a front facing camera to determine lane markings and a grille mounted radar for identifying the position of the vehicle directly ahead of it.
- The driver can use the pedals, steering wheel, and turn signals at any time though.
- The system monitors the interaction of the driver and the steering wheel regularly as well. If there is a lack of interaction, it'll issue visual and acoustic warnings. The frequency of these warnings will depend on vehicle location and speed.
- The driver should be monitoring the environment though and should be ready to take over at any time.
- For a lot of drivers, heavy traffic while going to and returning from work can leave them exhausted, angry, and stressed. This function will certainly be able to effectively reduce stress in these dense traffic scenarios.
What runs Traffic Jam Assist?
There are a couple of technologies that help make Ford Traffic Jam Assist a reality. These technologies are called Lane Centering Aid and Adaptive Cruise Control.
Lane Centering Aid is going to help ensure your vehicle stays within the drive lane. This technology is an improvement over the existing Lane Keeping Aid technology from Ford.
Adaptive Cruise Control is designed so that it uses information from radar and a camera to detect the distance and location of vehicles ahead of it. It reduces speed around slow vehicles and then reaches the set speed when the traffic clears. This now allows driver's to return to their original speed even after coming to a complete halt with ease.
Irrespective of whether you travel on routes which are constantly flooded with traffic or if you only traverse such routes occasionally, Traffic Jam Assist will surely be able to make such situations a lot less stressful. This allows a driver to reach their destination fresh and more relaxed. When can you take a nap during a traffic jam? Not yet!
Remote Park Assist
Remote Park Assist has built on an existing feature offered by Ford called Active Park Assist as well as another feature called Fully Assisted Parking Aid and is considered the next generation as far as parking technology is concerned which can control forward motion, reverse motion gear selection, and steering.
Vehicle sizes have gone up by as much as 25% in the last forty years while parking spaces and garages have not increased in size.
Remote Park Assist will let Drivers Park perpendicularly into narrow garages more easily. This system will also help optimize the parking space in crowded urban areas. One example of where it will help is in the case of parents who are struggling to help their young ones get out of their car after they've parked in a tight space next to other vehicles or when there is not enough room to open the door and so on. The driver will now be able to remotely turn on the vehicles engine and the car will be able to park itself in the garage or the parking spot and pull itself out when you want it to – when you want to leave. Now that is cool!
No more door scrapes!