Honda announces the i-ACC, a new intelligent cruise control

Honda has announced today that this year it will present a new intelligent cruise control (i-ACC, as it is known in English). It will debut on the refreshed CR-V 2015 and will feature an additional function beyond those of a conventional cruise control, allowing it to predict lane incursions by the vehicle it is travelling in.

The technology currently on offer maintains a constant longitudinal speed preset by the driver, which is only reduced if the distance to the vehicle ahead decreases. However, if another car suddenly moves into the same lane, the cruise control reacts too late, forcing the driver to brake sharply to try to avoid a collision.

According to Honda, the new i-ACC will be able to prevent such dangerous situations to a greater extent, since it will calculate them seconds before they occur. First, the cameras and sensors built into the car examine the position of the vehicles moving around it. It then applies an algorithm to quantify the likelihood that one of the vehicles in an adjacent lane will cut in hastily into the lane occupied by the user.

If the system considers it very likely that one of those vehicles is about to enter the lane abruptly, it begins to brake gently five seconds in advance and alerts the driver of its action on the instrument cluster. From that moment on, the braking force is graduated according to the proximity of the vehicle that has entered the lane.

The i-ACC works in any context regardless of which side traffic drives on. It is a product developed by Honda’s R&D centre in Germany, has been tested on European roads and is designed specifically for our continent.

Source | Honda