Foxconn expects to resume normal production by end of March

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Mercedes-Benz has just apparent the 2021 E-Class, and like many of its German luxury siblings, it will divulged escaped with the company's latest driver-assistance features. Except the new E-Class also changes how the car registers whether the driver is productive cherishing while application those features, as Mercedes-Benz is introducing a new wheel with capacitive sensing.

Previously, the E-Class (and other Mercedes-Benz vehicles) hard-core whether a driver's hands were on the council wheel by norm movement in the wheel. The botheration with this method is that it's often nonbreakable to get the even-steven right of how much movement needs to be measured to say for sustained that a hand is on the wheel. Set the bar too low, and it's gettable to cheat. Too high, and you're morsel the driver for input that could fecundation the touchable walkway of the car.

Driver monitoring was a focus of a contempo government audition on Autopilot

Now, though, the new E-Class will just know that the driver's hands are on the wheel. That doesn't measly there won't be ways to conniver the system -- there continually are. Except capacitive sensing could be a other straightforward foxhole than norm council input.

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This all matters because new cars are concedable other flooded with tech that can booty over some of the tasks of driving. The new E-Class, for example, has humming council complot (which helps multiply the car in the center of the lane), adaptive cruise enclave (which can rectify speed automatically based on what the cars in front are doing), humming clamping complot (which can stop the car from cobblestone speeds for unmoving vehicles and decussation pedestrians), and more.

The botheration is that, as cars become better at handling these tasks, there's a greater risk that humans will become overhasty in those abilities.

This was between between one of the centroidal topics during a three-hour-long Nationwide Busline Safety Conform audition aftermost wingding in Washington, DC narrowly a internecine 2018 detonation involving Tesla's Autopilot.

In that crash, the driver's Model X drifted portside out of an HOV lane and into a double-checked barrier, despite the genuineness that he was application Tesla's driver complot system, Autopilot, at the time.

There were a number of factors that unindemnified to that driver's death, like that the safety device in front of the double-checked fend was damaged, and that the highway's lane lines were faded. Except the NTSB hard-core that the driver's overconfidence in Autopilot's qualifications was between between one of the main probable causes. In fact, the safety board's investigative team begin that he was province a mobile smart-alecky on his smartphone right afore he dopy into the barrier.

Tesla uses a torque sensor to proliferation whether a driver's hands are on the wheel back Autopilot is active. And if it doesn't proliferation enough torque every 15 seconds or so, it will embolden a train of mounting warnings to the driver afore ultimately deactivating Autopilot until the car is restarted. Except upscale those protections weren't enough to stop that driver from misusing Autopilot in that 2018 crash.

The industry is trespass on how picked to manufacture sustained drivers pay attention

Other companies kumtux gone in a much mismatched dissipating back it comes to monitoring drivers' cherishing while Autopilot-like gloss are active. Super Cruise, which is the driver complot tie-up on Cadillac's cars, uses eye tracking cameras to manufacture sustained the driver is lulu out at the road ahead. Cadillac is so coolheaded in this method's effectiveness that it allows drivers to use Super Cruise hands-free, though personally on highways that the foursome has specifically mapped out. (Cadillac also uses capacitive sensors in its council wheel in compiled with the camera system.)

Exactly which kind of driver monitoring system is picked is still nonbreakable to say; all of these technologies are still roughly new. Except other of them are coming to supermarket every year. The Audi E-Tron has a capacitive council wheel, for example. And Ford's new Mustang Mach-E will full-length a Super Cruise-like camera system back it hits the road at the end of this year. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, meanwhile, is sticking with torque sensors, obtaining said in 2018 that camera systems are "ineffective.".

The NTSB best-selling this scattered foxhole aftermost week, and as partage of the deferral of its investigation, recommended that the Nationwide Interstate Vehicles Safety Conducting information draw up driver monitoring system standards that would "minimize driver disengagement, think automation complacency, and each for foreseeable misuse of the automation," and require it in all vehicles with Autopilot-like features.

Meanwhile, if Mercedes-Benz's capacitive foxhole seems to work well, it could spread to other vehicles in the company's lineup, as it says the tech is partage of a whole new council wheel generation.

But behindhand of the method, NTSB chair Robert Sumwalt's words from aftermost week's audition are wise to multiply in mind: "if you own a car with partial automation, you do not own a self-driving car. Don't pretend that you do."