In this next phase of development, engineers will drive Super Cruise vehicles in more and more challenging driving situations to test the system in a wide variety of environments to help refine it.

Cadillac’s Super Cruise test vehicles use a fusion of radar, ultrasonic sensors, cameras and GPS map data, integrated for a near-production appearance. Super Cruise is capable of semi-automated driving including hands-off lane following, braking and speed control under certain driving conditions. The system is designed to ease the driver’s workload on freeways only, in bumper-to-bumper traffic and on long road trips; however, the driver’s attention is still required.

Super Cruise’s development to date has included system testing on closed courses and in a driving simulator, as well as limited driving on real roads. When GM finishes testing the system, it expects to have accumulated hundreds of thousands of miles of driving in various environments, such as day and night driving and a variety of weather and traffic conditions.

As we continually upgrade Super Cruise’s enabling technologies, it is important to expose the updated system to different environments. The best way to achieve reliable performance is to gather as much data as possible in the conditions our customers will experience.

—Jeremy Salinger, R&D manager for Super Cruise

Even when Super Cruise becomes available on production vehicles, driver attention will be required because the system will have operational limitations based on external factors such as traffic, weather and visibility of lane markings. When reliable data is not available, such as when there are no lane markings, the system will prompt the driver to resume steering.

Many of the building block technologies for Super Cruise are already available on the all-new 2013 Cadillac XTS and ATS sedans as part of the available Driver Assist Package. It is the first Cadillac system to use sensor fusion to provide 360 degrees of crash risk detection and enhanced driver assist features.

Super Cruise semi-automated driving capability also adds the integration of lane-centering technology that relies on forward-looking cameras to detect lane markings and other sensors to detect curves and other road characteristics. Super Cruise will also use a series of alerts to communicate with the driver based on human factors research conducted on test tracks and in GM R&D’s 360-degree motion-based driving simulator specifically designed to induce realistic driver behaviors. Researchers used the simulator to measure driver eye glance behavior and control interactions in computer-generated automated driving situations.