alt Hacker NewsDidn't GM have a camera/software combo that would relax the MR dampener before bumps at one time? It didn't have active movement - just a regular shock but with fine control over fluid movement.
I think you're saying you have a pump that moves hydraulic fluid in anticipation of a road defect/speedbump, and does it per-wheel and proportional to the correction needed. Which is fascinating.
With regards to pre-crash posture, I'm not sure if this is to move the occupants into a more advantageous position for airbag deployment or to get more crash structure involved for a dissimilar vehicle crash (sedan vs. truck). Can you talk more about it? Is there going to be IIHS/Euro NCAP/C-NCAP testing?
Yes correct, we use electric motors to directly control an efficient compact pump to bidirectionally pump fluid, or use back electromotive force to dampen motion (and capture energy while doing so). This eliminates the need for controlled valves, but requires advanced controls to mitigate system dynamics (hydraulic losses, etc).
For ride control, machine vision helps a bit, but it’s limited due to the need to determine high fidelity road z-measurements which requires very high resolution and clarity at speed, and no visual occlusion. It helps with simple problems like bump vs hill (which is not trivial to predict just with accelerometers), but we’ve figured out how to get most of the benefit of machine vision with just accelerometers and fast actuators. GM was able to use vision to improve pothole performance, but it’s still a semi-active system that only provides fast adjustable stiffness (damping).
For pre-crash, the system uses cameras to detect a collision-path vehicle and determine an optimized impact zone for that vehicle. For example, the frame or bumper has more structural rigidity which may be desirable in certain crash scenarios.