But it can also give rise to problems for driver while on the road.
Although the brake pedal and accelerator pedal on cars have appeared for a long time, the confusion between these two positions when traveling on the road is sometimes caused unfortunate accidents. But with a recent patent, the driver confusing the accelerator and brake pedal when operating on the road may be a thing of the past Ng.
Recently, Stellantis – the parent group of Fiat, Chrysler and PSA Group of France, which owns brands such as Alfa, Dodge, Jeep, Peugeot and many others – has submitted a A new patented design allows the driver to change direction, accelerate and brake the car right on the steering wheel without the need for B pedalsbelow.
New Patent Drawing
In fact, this control method is still being applied perfectly in three-dimensional space like when flying an airplane. The steering wheel can be pushed to plunge down, pulled to fly up, rotated to tilt… but you still need a pedal to control the direction of movement.
It was thought that it could solve the problem of confusing the accelerator and brake pedals, but this idea can cause problems when applied to vehicles moving on the ground.
When traveling on the ground, inertia can cause many problems when using this method to increase or decrease speed or stop the vehicle. Not to mention unexpected collision situations, just passing through bumps or speed bumps can have an impact causing the steering wheel to move in an unintended direction and causing situations that are far more dangerous than the possibility of mistaking the accelerator and brake pedals.
That’s not to mention the situations when there are children sitting in the car naughtily can also significantly affect the driving in reality. So for many, this patent seems impractical and tries to fix a problem that “doesn’t break at all, but fix it until it breaks.”
However, people with lower body disabilities will benefit greatly from such a design. People with quadriplegic or hemiplegia who continue to drive have to install expensive or complicated hardware to adjust whenFoot pedal by hand. Even those who have amputated both drivers with just their feet can benefit from a complete steering wheel solution, Keep both feet on the steering wheel.
In theory, the car manufacturer can create a great racing simulator controller in which the steering controller is stable and does not affected by real-world G-forces when turning, accelerating, and braking.
It is important to note that filing a patent application does not always mean that the design will be submitted and o production in practice. Many patents are licensed but have never been put into practical use. It just means that Stellantis has the ability to do so if they want to, and to turn this idea into a commercial product, will need many other factors to come along.
Stellantis recently announced that all of their next-generation vehicles will be equipped with STLA AutoDrive, STLA Brain and STLA (Smart) Cockpit. AutoDrive is a version of Stellantis that is equivalent to Tesla’s Autopilot, Ford’s BlueCruise or GM’s Super Cruise.
Yves Bonnefont, Chief Software Officer of Stellantis, describes the platform of self-driving vehicles as a central CPU that has access to allsensors and operating mechanisms, the ability to update over the network and the ability to synchronously control all software on all Stellantis brands. This is what the STLA software suite will have.