Challenge: Can Lane Departure Alert be reprogrammed to Lane Keep Assist?

Almost certainly. The hardware is all the same so I can't see why not.

But they changed it for a reason and I can't imagine them altering their thinking enough for a software change. It's not the Toyota way.

 

After market would be a challenge. You'd need PID logic to re-steer the car to the middle of the lane.

As an experiment, I let the car correction steer the car and it was too steep. The correction would have left the car bouncing between the lane markers like a pin ball between two active bumpers. No, you need PID logic to smoothly transition to a path between the lane markers.

Bob Wilson

 

I don't think it's too steep. I think SA had a large dead zone and LKA doesn't.

 

Regardless, I think Toyota has enough to make it work with software.

Bob Wilson

 

Proportional Integral Derivative. A very basic method of single input single output feedback control.

 

A little more detailed, it is a control law approach that tries to get something to settle on a given value. Right now, the LKA works like a 'bang the stops' system that over corrects. In reality it applies one corrective force and then lets the car take that one input as the new direction which is across the lane and to the other side.

So the improvement would be a proportional correction back along the route of travel. BUT there is a problem of what is that route of travel and where is the car relative to the two lane markers?

So the last improvement is to integrate the direction of travel so the car is between the lane markers. These three modes are incorporated in a PID controller which is critical to smooth operation of an automated system.

You don't want the machine to be oscillating between the limits or slowly deciding it needs to resume a former heading. FYI, there is a black-art to this approach ... parameters to tweak and testing. Then if you're doing it for your car, no big deal. If you are doing it for someone else, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." - Shakespeare Henry VI

Bob Wilson

 

The LKA the Ioniq offers is more impressive but maybe Toyotas way of doing it is safer !?
I don't know but there is no doubt that Toyotas Saftey Sense has everything on board for a real LKA and Toyota could reprogram it in no time !

 

Not to mention that LKA is (was) an existing technology on former ATP Prius packages. And that Toyota offers LKA on other Toyota Corp. offerings (Lexus). So the safety thing doesn't hold much water.
It was just about my favorite thing about my previous car. And now my son has it. (and gloats)
Get the Pitchforks! To the battlements! Maybe we should start a petition. (Not that Toyota pays much attention to petitions, consider Entune)

 

Ioniq in the U.S. just has LDW. Unlike the Ioniq that you have in Europe which has essentially LCA from the videos I have seen.

 

This evening, I did a quick sanity check on a 5-lane highway at midnight. With the car in a center lane on cruise control, I took my hands off and let the car wander. It initially alarmed on the right lane marker and corrected. But this left the car headed, slowly to the opposite lane marker. When it alarmed, the car corrected and a message flashed about needing to put my hands back on the steering wheel.

I'll try to repeat the test and put up an MPEG showing the behavior. But if someone has some skills with YouTube, this might be a fun video.

Bob Wilson

 

I could probably do it easily if I had the source code. But we don't have the source code and we never will. That means a reverse-engineering project which is like 100 times more difficult.

 

I have been comparing the Prius Prime with the 2017 Honda CRV. I understand they are two completely different animals but I like both vehicles equally so far. I watched a review of the Honda driving at night and the driver put the car on cruise control and with his hands off the steering wheel the Honda followed the car in front at various speeds perfectly, even around sharp bends in the road. Very impressive to see.

 

From the Honda CR-V website: "Lane Keeping Assist System (LKAS) If your vehicle begins to stray from the center of a detected lane without signaling, the steering adjusts to help bring you back to the lane center"

This would be better described as LCA (Lane Centering Assist). However similar to other brands, Honda seems to be sticking with the more familiar LKA terminology, somewhat obscuring which feature you are getting unless you do some research. I think besides semantics there are also some philosophical questions about how this feature is viewed. Ostensibly it is a safety feature, and yet many are starting to look at it as a convenience feature. I think it's a gray area but here is my current thinking about it:

NADA (what 100% of cars had until a few years ago) It was the driver's sole responsibly to keep the vehicle in the lane. A few seconds of inattention, if you are lucky, will only result in being honked at (essentially a primitive form of LDW). If you are not lucky, the very worst outcome is entirely possible. Thus you have no choice but to constantly pay attention to your driving if you want to avoid having an accident.

LDW (Lane Departure Warning) In many, if not hopefully most cases, this warning will allow you to recover from inadvertent inattention before an accident occurs.

LKA (Lane Keep Assist) Since we may not always be able to react quickly enough to the warning, this feature can keep you from going out of your lane, thus avoiding an accident

I think LDW and LKA are clearly safety features, valuable ones for sure. The only potential drawback occurs if someone starts to feel that they can be more careless with texting, radio knob fiddling, etc. since they assume that LDW and LKA will watch out for them. However these drawbacks have long been recognized with ABS and even airbags when drivers start to believe that their car will protect them from their carelessness.

LCA (Lane Centering Assist) In my opinion now we are starting to cross the line into convenience. Although in theory a safety argument can be made, by reducing driver fatigue, and also allowing the driver to concentrate more on their surroundings and other cars. Unfortunately my pessimism about current drivers is that many people will see this as further incentive to text, radio knob fiddle, etc. Since the systems are far from perfect, this attitude will inevitably lead to a bad outcome. It's not a question of whether that will happen, but when. At least current systems make an attempt to require that the driver stay engaged by shutting the system off if input is not detected on the steering wheel after a certain number of seconds. However there also seems to be some surprisingly low tech ways to defeat that safeguard.

My opinion - as much as I would love to have LCA (or autopilot) as I believe that I would use them responsibly, I think they should only be available in conjunction with technology that detects if the driver's eyes are looking forward, a safeguard which should be harder to defeat.

 

Driving attentively means you're eyes are NOT looking forward all the time. This becomes entirely obvious when you are driving a boat on a lake where there are no lanes and anyone can come from any direction. You have to be aware of everything in a 360° view around yourself. In a car, rear-view mirrors and looking out your side windows are just as required for safe driving as looking forward is.

 

When I said "detects if the driver's eyes are looking forward" my previous statements already established the context of what I was talking about. I was referring to eye detection as the equivalent of detecting input on the steering wheel, which as I stated "shutting the system off if input is not detected on the steering wheel after a certain number of seconds". And in context of my other statement, LCA when used correctly can allow drivers to "concentrate more on their surroundings and other cars".

No I don't believe that staring unblinkingly straight ahead constitutes safe driving. That would be pretty stupid to think that.

 

Maybe this ist why Toyota did it their way !
Either the driver isn't paying attention or more likely he has Autopilot enabled and thinks he doesn't need to pay attention!
He probably got used to the Autopilot taking care of certain situations !

 

Hard to say on that one, it looks like there were no warning signs or cones, at least not visible in the video. And the white pickup in front of the Tesla was blocking his view. The pickup for whatever reason (maybe their view was blocked also?) waited until the last possible second to move to the right, giving the Tesla virtually no time to react, whether manually driven or on autopilot. Especially since the Tesla was following just one second behind the pickup. If they had maintained three seconds distance they might have avoided the accident.

I noticed that the Tesla's emergency flashers started blinking a fraction of a second after the collision, that must be an automatic feature as I doubt the driver pushed the button that fast (especially if he was being woken out of nap)