Cruise Control Interlock for Wiper-Triggered Speed Deactivation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Cruise control systems lack adjustable settings and sufficient notifications, leading to operator confusion and safety issues during inclement weather conditions, and fail to account for situations where deactivation may cause undesirable effects, such as disrupting downhill speed control.
Innovation Solution
A cruise control interlock system that detects vehicle conditions, such as windshield wiper activation, and executes a process to encourage deactivation or reduce speed, providing notifications and adjustable settings to prevent unnecessary interference, while postponing deactivation during downhill speed control to maintain vehicle control.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If cruise control is automatically deactivated during inclement weather conditions, then safety is improved, but operator confusion increases due to lack of notifications and adjustable settings
Solution Approach 1:
The system provides notifications to the operator when cruise control is deactivated due to inclement weather conditions. The notification system gives feedback about the deactivation reason and allows operator awareness and understanding of system actions, thereby reducing operator confusion while maintaining safety improvements
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements adjustable settings that allow operators to customize cruise control behavior based on their preferences and specific operating conditions. This dynamic configurability enables the system to adapt between automatic deactivation for safety and operator-controlled modes, reducing confusion by giving operators control over system behavior
2Reliability
If cruise control is deactivated based on windshield wiper activation, then safety during inclement weather is improved, but downhill speed control functionality is disrupted
Solution Approach 1:
The system checks whether downhill speed control is active before deactivating cruise control. By performing this preliminary check, the system prevents the harmful action of deactivating cruise control when it would disrupt downhill speed control functionality, thereby maintaining productivity while still ensuring safety during inclement weather in other scenarios
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of automatically deactivating cruise control when windshield wipers are activated, the system inverts the logic by checking for conflicting functions first. When downhill speed control is detected as active, the system prevents cruise control deactivation, thereby maintaining the beneficial downhill speed control functionality while still allowing safety-based deactivation in non-conflicting scenarios
Data Source
AI summary
A cruise control interlock system detects a current set of conditions for a vehicle, compares the current conditions with cruise control interlock conditions (e.g., an adjustable threshold state of a windshield wiper system), and executes a process to deactivate the cruise control system. The process to deactivate functionality of the cruise control system may include presenting a notification to the operator to alert the operator to an upcoming automatic deactivation or to encourage the operator to deactivate cruise control. The process also may include a vehicle de-rate process (e.g., reducing vehicle speed) to induce the operator to deactivate cruise control. Deactivation of cruise control may be postponed in some situations, such as when the vehicle is ascending an uphill grade or where doing so may deactivate an active downhill speed control function.