The new autonomous driving system Ford Co-Pilot360 will allow you to drive without hands (3 photos)

The introduction of electric vehicles expands the possibilitiesto use fundamentally new control systems that increase the safety of the trip, reduce driver fatigue and increase car maneuverability. Ford has announced the creation of a new digital assistant Ford Co-Pilot360, allowing to provide a trip in offline mode Active Drive Assist, in which the driver does not have to keep his hands on the steering wheel.

According to the developers of the leadautomaker, the first car with the Co-Pilot360 system will be the Ford Mustang Mach-E electro-crossover, and in the future other models, which are scheduled to enter the market in 2021.

New “Hands-Free Driving” option for driversold using special equipment that comes with the Ford Co-Pilot360 Active 2.0 Prep Package. It includes a video camera installed in the passenger compartment and used to control the driver’s direction of vision. A few more cameras and radars are located outside the car, and are needed to track the situation around a moving car. After the installation of this equipment, the software and its updates will begin to arrive by air, starting from the III quarter of 2021.

Steering a car without hands on the steering wheel will be available onspecially defined sections of expressways in the USA and Canada. It is noteworthy that today there are over 160 thousand kilometers of roads on which you can use "Hands-Free Driving". During the system's viability testing, Ford testers already traveled over one million kilometers. It is also reported that the new Ford Co-Pilot360 was the logical development of the previous Ford cruise control system known as Intelligent Adaptive Cruise Control.

The system starts by turning on the modeHands-Free Mode, in which the infrared camera inside the cabin begins to track the position of the driver’s head and the direction of his gaze. The system starts to signal if the driver’s eyes are long off the road or closed. If a person does not respond to a warning system, the car forcibly reduces speed. This approach eliminates the need for the driver to constantly keep his hands on the steering.
The Co-Pilot360 system provides variousfeatures such as Hands-Free, Lane Centering Mode, Road Edge Detection, Blind Spot Assist and Adaptive Cruise Control, as well as Active Park Assist 2.0, which allows you to automatically park the car in any place available for this.

Entering the Ford Mustang electric crossover marketMach-E was previously scheduled to take place at the end of this year, but events related to the global pandemic forced developers to postpone the event to 2021. At the same time, it was stated that the car will receive 30% faster charging than previously announced.

Source: ford