Mercedes Designed An Automatic Launch Control System That Reacts to Green Lights
The Drive ·
Basic launch control takes most of the guesswork out of quick acceleration. Mercedes designed a system that could give its drivers an extra edge at the stoplight drags. The post Mercedes Designed An Automatic Launch Control System That Reacts to Green Lights appeared first on The Drive .
Are you ready for a launch control system that can detect a green light for you? Mercedes-Benz has come up with exactly that . The patent application makes it sound a bit abstract (“A method for supporting a human driver of a motor vehicle through a race start by a support system, a computer program product, a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, and a support system”), but the description lays it out pretty plainly:
“Up to now, race start technology supporting a human driver has relied on a reaction time of the driver, which may limit the performance of the technology,” the application said.
Hear that, you ignorant fleshbag? You’re slowing down the poor car! As described, the Mercedes-Benz system would work by combining several existing features of a self-driving software setup :
“Autonomous motor vehicles may apply machine learning models in order to detect when to begin to accelerate from a stationary state to, for example, a cruising speed of 40 mph,” the application said. “The vehicles may analyze data from a camera observing a traffic light changing from red to green.”
That’s oddly specific, no?
“Furthermore,” it says, “autonomous motor vehicles may use a control algorithm in order to accelerate in a stable fashion, especially for cruising speeds as high as 70 mph, as may be encountered when accelerating from a ramp onto a freeway.”
So, why not just string those processes together? Accelerate quickly, then taper off to a cruising speed. Bingo-bango, you’ve got autonomous launch control.
We also can’t help but notice that the target cruise speed is 70 mph—10mph quicker than the industry-standard acceleration test, giving the car 10 mph of headroom to taper things off. A rapid throttle-lift at 60 mph won’t provide a particularly luxurious sensation inside the cabin.
Sound far-fetched? Remember, this is the company that gave us an SUV with “Drift Mode.” Let’s assume nothing is off the table. But it does make us wonder just what exactly we’re supposed to do in all these performance cars if the computer is taking care of the fun parts. Post about it on the Internet?
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The post Mercedes Designed An Automatic Launch Control System That Reacts to Green Lights appeared first on The Drive .