How Software-Defined Vehicles Will Get Their Feel Back

You're going to read a lot about software-defined vehicles (SDVs) in this space going forward—it's shorthand for how our experience with cars, trucks, and SUVs is increasingly shaped by the software within them. The customer benefit of the SDV is increased functionality through multitasking. Introducing and enabling new options, features, and capabilities simply by teaching old hardware dogs—computers, sensors, actuators, networks—to do new tricks. Many will become available via over-the-air updates. It all has the potential to completely reshape how we maintain our cars.

Giving Vehicles a Sense of Touch

As an example, global steering supplier Nexteer has teamed with Israeli data analytics and artificial intelligence startup Tactile Mobility to enable vehicles to compute the instantaneous road surface friction and even to monitor tire health, without the need for pricey "smart tire" sensors that require a Bluetooth low-energy or Wi-Fi connection. This new system merely processes data coming in from existing sensors that report things like individual wheel speeds, instantaneous powertrain and brake torque requests, steering input, body acceleration rates, and yaw.

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Sensing Road Friction

We sampled a Chevy Bolt EV outfitted with the system and observed the instantaneous surface-friction (mu) reading on a screen drop the instant we transitioned from dry concrete to a glazed tile surface. By taking big data from zillions of test cars doing similar maneuvers, and feeding it into machine-learning programs, the company developed a software package that can discern microslip long before a traction-control or antilock brake engagement would be called for. This information can be used to proactively (and judiciously) reduce cruise control set speeds when slip is detected for safety. It could also enhance performance by using the precise friction level detected while coming to a stop to tell the launch-control system exactly how much torque it can effectively launch with.

Detecting Tire Wear, and Spare or Winter Tire Fitment

The same software has been taught to sense minute changes in tire diameter, sidewall stiffness, tire-tread "squirm," and other tells that indicate a tire is wearing down or that, between one ignition cycle and the next, a tire or tires have been changed; the system then adjusts traction and stability control parameters accordingly. A worn tire was fitted to our Bolt EV test car, and the system reported it within 15 seconds of sensor interrogation. Jurisdictions that require winter-tire use are particularly interested in this feature to automatically trigger reduced maximum permissible speeds when winter tires are fitted, for example. Fleet operators are also keen to have their vehicles warn them proactively as tires near the end of their service life.

Why Car Enthusiasts Should Care

Electric power steering has been demonized for destroying road feel, and the coming transition to steer-by-wire only promises to make matters worse. Instantaneous microsensing of road-surface frictionshouldtheoretically give the force-feedback system all the data it needs to deliver the steering-wheel twitches and wiggles vintage Porsche 911s and E39 BMW 5 Series cars used to tell us what was happening at the road surface. Nexteer is hard at work on such systems, and we're eager to flog their finished product on a road course. But of course, our future autonomous e-chauffeurs will need to feel the road, too, so this tech has a long future.

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Tiny Algorithm

The transition to software-defined vehicles involves moving away from tens or hundreds of task-oriented electronic control units (ECUs) to a set of more capable, multitasking "domain controllers" tasked with monitoring sensors and actuators involved in various tasks. This Nexteer-Tactile Mobility software is so tiny it can reside on today's electric power-assist steering (EPAS) ECU or in the new wave of chassis domain controllers.

More New Tricks to Come

Tactile Mobility is just getting started and believes that, with time and additional data and machine learning aimed at the data streams coming from other existing sensors, it will one day be able to detect wear in other chassis components. They're very close to being able to measure degradation in shock absorbers on vehicles with adaptive dampers or ride-height sensors at each corner.

What About Data Monetization?

This is one of the holy grails of the SDV—a means for a sold vehicle to continue to generate revenue for a manufacturer. The instantaneous road-friction data has value. It could, for example, be shared with other road users via vehicle-to-vehicle communications to enhance safety, but it could also help inform road maintenance authorities about where salt is most needed. Worn-out tires could trigger marketing pushes, reminders about seasonal tire swaps could be served up, etc.

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What'sIt Cost, and When Will It Launch?

This is essentially software: "1s and 0s." So, it's cheap and consumers won't likely be asked to pay for the essential safety functionality. Manufacturers will pay something for the intellectual property, but the contracts are being inked with data-sharing agreements and data monetization deals in mind. And BMW Group is in the process of rolling this technology out across its entire BMW/Mini/Rolls-Royce lineup, with other manufacturers expected to follow soon.