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Kia gets Wise to autonomous driving

January 06, 2016
Kia gets Wise to autonomous driving
Kia says its Drive Wise technologies are primarily designed to make driving safer and easier, as well as to reduce or eliminate some of the more humdrum aspects of driving
Kia says its Drive Wise technologies are primarily designed to make driving safer and easier, as well as to reduce or eliminate some of the more humdrum aspects of driving
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The I-Cockpit recognizes the driver's preferred settings by way of their fingerprint or smartwatch and the settings can then be changed using gesture control
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The I-Cockpit recognizes the driver's preferred settings by way of their fingerprint or smartwatch and the settings can then be changed using gesture control
Kia's I-Cockpit employs "blind control" that allows drivers to change settings without taking their eyes off the road
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Kia's I-Cockpit employs "blind control" that allows drivers to change settings without taking their eyes off the road
The Autonomous Valet Parking system allows a Kia vehicle to park itself remotely once the driver has exited the vehicle and issued the instruction via a smartwatch
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The Autonomous Valet Parking system allows a Kia vehicle to park itself remotely once the driver has exited the vehicle and issued the instruction via a smartwatch
Kia says its Drive Wise technologies are primarily designed to make driving safer and easier, as well as to reduce or eliminate some of the more humdrum aspects of driving
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Kia says its Drive Wise technologies are primarily designed to make driving safer and easier, as well as to reduce or eliminate some of the more humdrum aspects of driving
Traffic Jam Assist maintains a safe distance from the vehicle in front when in congested traffic
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Traffic Jam Assist maintains a safe distance from the vehicle in front when in congested traffic
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Kia was recently awarded its first license for testing autonomous driving technologies on public roads. Now, the carmaker has unveiled the brand under which it plans to bring those technologies to market in the future. Kia Drive Wise covers both partially and fully autonomous technologies.

Kia has already said that it plans to bring partially-autonomous cars to market by 2020, and a fully-autonomous vehicle by 2030. Its Drive Wise technologies are inherent to that vision. The firm says they are primarily designed to make driving safer and easier, as well as to reduce or eliminate some of the more humdrum aspects of driving.

The more advanced technologies under development are said to be aimed at providing drivers with greater levels of assistance, anticipating and reacting to changing road conditions and potential hazards to improve safety for all road users. Some of the technologies are being showcased at CES this week.

Among those on display are Kia's Highway Autonomous Driving and Urban Autonomous Driving technologies. These variously use a combination of radar and camera systems, GPS and sensors to allow the car to negotiate lane-changing and overtaking on highways, or to navigate busy city environments.

Traffic Jam Assist maintains a safe distance from the vehicle in front when in congested traffic
Traffic Jam Assist maintains a safe distance from the vehicle in front when in congested traffic

Preceding Vehicle Following is a lane-keeping system that allows the car to follow the route of a vehicle in front at a safe distance if road markings are not clear, while Traffic Jam Assist maintains a safe distance from the vehicle in front when in congested traffic.

Also on display is Kia's Emergency Stop System, which works with the Driver Status Monitoring system to bring the vehicle to a stop safely in the event that the driver's face shows signs of excessive lack of driving attention, such as distraction or fatigue. The Autonomous Valet Parking system, meanwhile, allows the vehicle to park itself remotely once the driver has exited the vehicle and issued the instruction via a smartwatch.

Away from the Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), Kia's I-Cockpit is also being exhibited. It employs "blind control" that allows drivers to change settings without taking their eyes off the road. The cockpit recognizes the driver's preferred settings, such as for temperature or display configuration, by way of their fingerprint or smartwatch and the settings can then be changed using gesture control.

Kia plans to show more of its Drive Wise technologies and concepts at the 2016 Geneva Motor Show later this year.

The video below provides an overview of Drive Wise.

Source: Kia Motors

DriveWise: Intelligent safety technologyㅣSafetyㅣKia

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AutomotiveKiaAutonomous VehiclesCES 2016
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Bob Flint
Always shown in optimum dry, warm sunny conditions with NO F'n traffic...
What an idealistic fantasy...
Daishi
With a prediction for 2013 they are at least more realistic than some others.
One "smart" feature that might be easy to design and useful would be related to vehicle to vehicle communication. When 2 cars are in an accident they should automatically exchange information wirelessly.
I'm sure vehicle to vehicle protocols would be a story of constantly new versions like WiFI but it should be easy to deploy something with a simple header and a TLV field that is mostly compatible across versions where unknown fields/TLV's are just ignored be things running older versions.
The problem is this could be a trove of information that would surpass things like licence plate readers if it fell into authoritarian use. I'm not terribly familiar with the V2V protocols that have been created so far but I haven't seen much on them in a while so I assume it's not a staple part of anyone's automation strategy.
Maybe it's assumed that just sending data through 3G or 4G would make more sense than V2V and in most cases and that's probably true but it would be nice to see some information exchanged automatically in the cases of hit and runs.
Mel Tisdale
Any autonomous vehicle system that relies on GPS is prone to it being jammed. There are some who would take great pleasure in bringing all the traffic to a halt over a large part of any major city, probably causing many accidents at the same time.
I don't mind people putting their lives at risk by riding in these vehicles (re. Darwin Awards), but I object like heck their putting my life at risk at the same time.
As for following the car in front if the lane markings are obscured, how long will it be before we are regularly treated to a circus of cars playing follow the leader by simply going round and round a traffic island? Snowy days should prove particularly amusing.
On a purely technical note, I would like to know how easy it will be for the driver to take over the steering if necessary. If it is easy for them to do so, then it will be equally easy for road surface anomalies or a puncture to adversely affect the steering when in autonomous mode. As things are today the driver will have their hands on the steering wheel and thus very quickly (re)gain control. If, as might easily be the case with an autonomous car, they are tapping in a text message, say, vital milliseconds will be lost as they respond to 'something funny going in somewhere in the vehicle' before they can realise what t is and then get control.