Ford Motor Company has filed a patent for a driver assist shutdown system that could be used in future Ford vehicles, Ford Authority has learned.
The patent was filed on October 27th, 2021, published on April 27th, 2023, and assigned serial number 0127515.
The Ford Authority Take
With driver assist systems becoming both more prevalent and more complex in new vehicles, year after year, Ford is obviously keen to stay a step ahead of the competition in that regard. As such, the automaker has rolled out quite a few new driver assist features in recent years, and filed more than a few patents previewing tech that could be used in future Ford vehicles. The latest is this – a very interesting patent filing for a driver assist shutdown system that would affectively disable those features under certain circumstances.
The system would accomplish this task by preventing the input of data from a device necessary for the function of the driver assist system, which is a bit of a change from the way these systems – such as lane-keep assist and automatic emergency braking – currently work. As Ford points out in the patent, these types of features typically work well most of the time, but there are certain times when it would be beneficial if they’re turned off.
One such example relates to emergency responders such as police officers, firefighters, or ambulance services, which – when responding to a call – may wish to disable ADAS systems because they could interfere with the evasive maneuvers drivers might perform in that type of situation. In fact, such a system could even prove detrimental in that case. As FoMoCo points out, even making it possible to disable these systems via something like the infotainment screen may take too long, which is precisely why it’s aiming to automate that process, as is the case with this patent.
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