Car control with a mobile phone, a new feature of Ford products

It seems that the American car manufacturer Ford is developing a new advanced system. This Ford system provides the possibility of controlling the car with a mobile phone.

American automaker Ford recently filed a patent with the United States Patent and Trademark Office for an advanced system that allows remote control of a car via phone. More specifically, Ford is developing an advanced remote parking system that may be used in its products in the future.

What is the difference between the Ford system to control the car with the phone compared to other examples?

The basis of Ford’s remote parking system is nothing new, and like many similar systems, it aims to enable parking and exiting while the driver is out of the car. However, Ford is looking to take the smartphone-based parking system a step further. This feature can help the driver in different situations; For example, when the parking space is so tight that the driver cannot open the doors easily to get out of the car if he parks there, or when the driver is weak in double parking on a busy street.

Of course, as Ford admitted, their proprietary system has this key limitation, which requires the driver’s own intervention, except for the data received from the sensors embedded in different parts. For this reason, the driver must give directions to the car using his smartphone, instead of the car automatically making the necessary movements to park in the desired location. The fact that the user enters into the equation makes this new feature of Ford products different from other remote parking systems.

How exactly does this Ford system work?

In the car control system with the phone owned by Ford, first of all, various sensors including lidars, ultrasonics, cameras and radars prepare an image of the car’s surroundings to be displayed on the person’s phone. These sensors detect the presence of various factors in the environment such as other cars, pedestrians and walls. Then the image prepared by them is adjusted according to the actual dimensions so that the driver has a more accurate view of the surroundings.

It is at this point that the driver, using the image obtained from the car’s sensors, can park the car in the desired location only through his mobile phone. The parking places selected by the user are divided into three categories: “correct”, “incorrect” and “unknown”. The “correct” parking place is the one where the car can park without any challenges. The “incorrect” parking space is already occupied by another car, and in this situation, the car sends a message to the driver to choose another place to park.

Finally, when the location is identified as “unknown”, the driver must interact with the car as much as possible. In fact, this is the time when a person can see the parking place, but the car is not able to recognize it at that moment. Here, the car calculates the path between itself and the user’s chosen parking place to scan the environment again. This process finds until the car can finally analyze the parking location correctly and finally put it in the “correct” category.

In this process, the driver must continuously respond to Ford’s remote parking system through his mobile phone. It was mentioned earlier that the interaction of the user with the car is the reason for the difference between the Ford system and other similar systems. As you can see in the image above, for example, a person can constantly move his hand on a circle on the phone screen to command the car to make the necessary movement. It is even possible that a person can direct the car to the desired parking place by pulling a flash.

Although the way Ford’s phone parking system works seems simple, the American automaker may even require training before using it. Apart from this, it is debatable how much drivers might use such a feature in real situations. Since most of Ford’s high-end vehicles use all kinds of sensors at the present time, it is at least technically possible to implement such an idea.

Gadget News users, what do you think about Ford’s mobile phone control system?