GM has now unveiled Ultra Cruise, which is designed to one day enable hands-free driving in 95% of all driving scenarios, the company announced on Oct. 6.
The company noted the aim of the new advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS) technology is hands-free driving on all public paved roads in the United States and Canada. GM will offer Ultra Cruise on select models in 2023, with Cadillac being the first to introduce the technology.
Ultra Cruise will cover more than 2 million miles of roads at launch in the United States and Canada, with the capacity to grow up to more than 3.4 million miles. GM noted that customers will be able to travel hands free with Ultra Cruise across nearly every road, including city streets, subdivision streets and paved rural roads, in addition to highways.
Ultra Cruise works through a combination of cameras, radars and LiDAR, developing accurate, 360-degree, three-dimensional statistical representations of the environment surrounding vehicles with redundancies in critical areas. Ultra Cruise also incorporates an integrated LiDAR behind the windshield.
“We believe that the combination of different sensors, or sensor fusion, leads to the most robust hands-free driver-assist system for our customers,” Doug Parks, GM executive vice president of global product development, purchasing and supply chain, said in a statement.
Ultra Cruise employs a 5-nanometer, scalable compute architecture powered by the Ultifi software platform and Vehicle Intelligence Platform. Over time, Ultra Cruise can add features, functions and services through over-the-air updates.
Ultra Cruise builds on the capabilities of Super Cruise, GM’s first hand-free ADAS technology. “The combination of Ultra Cruise for premium offerings and Super Cruise for lower-cost products will enable us to offer driver-assist technology across price points and segments,” Parks said in a statement.
New automated driving features Ultra Cruise has in comparison to Super Cruise are intended to:
* Provide users with information based on their experience with the system through an all-new dynamic display
* React to permanent traffic control devices
* Follow internal navigation routes
* Maintain headway; follow speed limits
* Support automatic and on-demand lane change
* Support left- and right-hand turns
* Support close object avoidance
* Support parking in residential driveways
