The American General Motors (GM) has registered a patent application for a system that alerts the driver to roads with degraded surfaces, a system that could indeed be useful to many drivers.
The GM system uses the sensors and cameras of vehicles to collect data from the roads, namely the behavior of the suspension, wheel rotation, and vibrations during driving. The information is then sent to the system to display road imperfections in real time, such as potholes or puddles, and transmit this data to the cloud and send it to the GPS to create an alternative route.
Although it has not been specified in the patent, it is expected that the new system could work in harmony with GM’s autonomous driving system, Super Cruise, which will soon have 1,200,000 kilometers of mapped roads in the US and Canada where it can be used.
The Level 2 autonomous driving system allows the vehicle to move without the need for driver assistance, but requires full human attention for certain maneuvers when necessary.
It remains to be seen whether the technology to avoid poorly maintained roads will make its way into General Motors vehicles.
