Ford has filed a patent application for a rather interesting piece of technology. The American manufacturer has filed a patent application for technology, which is able to detect motorcycles that are crossing lanes on the road constantly, trying to filter through traffic. The technology will make user of various sensors such as cameras, radar, lidar and sonar as well. The idea is to detect whether any lane-splitting motorcycle is approaching the car from behind and feed that information into the car's collision avoidance system. Ford says that it has developed this technology mainly for usage in self-driving cars. But the same technology can also work on non-autonomous vehicles.
(The technology is being specifically developed for self-driving cars)
Ford filed the patent application with the US Patent and Trademark Office a couple of weeks ago. The patent application explains how the technology would work and how it will focus particularly on the space between lanes and detect whether a two-wheeler is approaching from that area or not. This will help in deciding whether the car is supposed to slow down to allow the motorcycle to pass, stay in the same lane till it overtakes or turn on the indicators to signal that the car is about to change lanes.
A company called Delphi Technologies from Michigan, USA had also filed a patent application for a similar technology which will help the car move away from the lane markers in order to make more space for two-wheelers to overtake.
Of course, it might be possible that this technology might never make it to production cars but with more and more manufacturers researching and developing autonomous vehicles, this is a one key area which could make self-driving cars even safer. This technology will specially work in a country like India, where lane discipline is non-existent.
