Toyota Experimenting With Joystick Control For Cars 609
alphadogg writes "Today it's the stuff of video games, but Toyota is experimenting with joystick control for a new breed of compact cars and transporters. The world's biggest car maker built the technology into a couple of concept vehicles that were on display Wednesday at the Tokyo Motor Show. The FT-EV II, which got its world premiere at the event, is a compact electric vehicle designed for short trips. The car retains seats for four passengers despite being much more compact than most other cars, and packs drive-by-wire technology so it can be controlled with a joystick. The car's steering, braking and acceleration can be controlled by hand so foot pedals aren't needed, freeing up space to provide more legroom for the driver."
Power Steering failure? (Score:5, Insightful)
What happens when there's a power steering failure? I know it's not a common problem, but it is a problem which randomly comes up. At least with a steering wheel the driver can generally muscle the wheels to turn- I can't imagine a joystick acting as an actual lever to turn the wheels, but as more of an electronic device to turn on some motors which would handle this.
Special license needed? (Score:4, Insightful)
Very non-standard controls... the reason I can jump in basically any car and drive it is because the operations are mostly standardised. Left pedal clutch, middle break, right accelerator, steering wheel is obvious, indicators is the stick on the right. Lights etc trial-and-error mostly. Trucks, buses - well anything that hits the road and has more than two wheels pretty much works like that.
This is so different, will we need special licenses/training for it? How about force-feedback, for example? I know it's experimental but still makes you wonder how about using it on the road.
And safety. For such a super-compact car. Crumple zones don't compact well - maybe I should state that different. They need space to crumple in. Something like that. And that is space OUTSIDE the passenger compartment of course.
So many problems... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) As somebody else mentioned, power steering failure is a big one
2) A car does not move conducive to the way a joystick moves, the throttle/break and steering need to be seperate.
or your just asking for trouble in a hard turn or emergency situation.
3) I guarantee you, steering fatigue will set in if a drivers only means for controlling the vehicle are with one hand.
4) I could go on but I think most of these issues are quite obvious.
Re:Force Feedback? (Score:5, Insightful)
The feedback is critical. The problem is, a force feedback on the joystick would probably make a bigger difference than on a wheel, since smaller movements would make larger turns. In that vein, it seems a wheel would give more fine-grained control. You may not be able to change the turn angle as fast, but you would probably be able to be more precise, which in most cases, I think is more important.
Re:Force Feedback? (Score:3, Insightful)
Especially in Europe. I can see joystick control working fine on American streets and highways, but in countries where they have two-lane roads barely the width of two smart cars, I'm not so sure.
Re:Force Feedback? (Score:4, Insightful)
Even worse is that the dynamics of a vehicle can make joystick control even worse. When you're just on a computer there is no angular acceleration of your body so its relatively simple.
As you go into a left turn, your hand wants to keep going the direction it was going, which is actually right from your frame of reference. Meaning you have to pull left harder.
Except that pull isn't the same for all speeds. Either they're going to have to dial down the controls for at speed or you're going to have a few people that get it up to 60 mph try to take a turn and over shoot their intended position....
I can just see it (Score:4, Insightful)
A yoke is just plain more stable than a stick. The latter is great for quick input of large control motions, but has more drawbacks than advantages where the objective is smooth and precise results with minimal interference.
For all of the "fighter jock" fantasies, drivers are a lot more like jumbo jet jockeys. That includes race drivers -- or don't you think that someone would have put this to use on the F1 circuit already if it was actually better?
Re:Force Feedback? (Score:3, Insightful)
Modern cars, sadly, have little of the feedback of old. I'm convinced this makes them less safe, because you can't feel what the road's doing under you like you used to. This, coupled with ever-fatter tyres which grip and grip and grip and then suddenly don't grip, adds up to bad news. But people mostly manage. Feedback's great, but it doesn't seem to be necessary for most driving conditions.
Re:Force Feedback? (Score:5, Insightful)
In racing games it's usually considered far preferable to use a wheel over a joystick because honestly you really don't need to go from straight to 40 degrees that quickly. Ever. The car has traction limits.
Control > Twitch.
Re:Power Steering failure? (Score:5, Insightful)
Very good point. I've run out of gas twice
Once is unlucky. Twice is incompetent.
Re:I seem to remember (Score:4, Insightful)
The Wright brothers kept trying because they were dealing with a new field and improvements to technology were being made.
Driving with a stick is not a new field, a little history and you'd notice that cars started out this way. Steering wheels were the progression AWAY from driving with a stick. To top it off, nothing has changed to improve the technology. Adding computers and fly by wire actually makes it worse, unless you add even more technology to make it essentially the same as before you added the computer.
This is roughly the same as arguing that its a good idea to put the engine the Wright brothers used in the Flyer into your modern day Cessna and trying to fly it.
You are correct, if no one tried there would never be any improvements ... problem is, they already tried, and the improvement was NOT TO USE A STICK.
History is hard, lets go shopping!
Re:So many problems... (Score:3, Insightful)
5) Cannot eat breakfast burrito and twitter that I am eating a breakfast burrito while steering with knee anymore.
FTFY. Wait... were you describing a problem, or a solution?
Re:Johnny Cab (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing inherently worse about driving with a stick than with a wheel and pedals is that it's much easier to accidentally overcorrect, especially if you are unfamiliar with using an analog joystick (in other words you're either not pressing it at all, or you're pressing it as far to the right or left as you can). Well, there's also the stopping issue causing your body to shift and therefore bump the stick, possibly preventing you from stopping.
At low speeds, I don't see these as being much more dangerous than a conventional steering mechanism, especially if there is signal noise filtration (shaky hands? let's ignore that) and a rate-of-turn limiter that scales with speed (simulation of "wheel resistance").
The lack of a steering wheel might increase the risk of back and neck injury in an accident, however, due to the increased space you'd have to move in (even with an airbag).
Re:Old news - Saab tried this in the 80s (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not what I remember. I remember that it was very accurate and very quick. It was easy to safely swerve around around a pylon safely, for example. Much more so than a wheel. Ultimately a stick would highly benefit from a variable ratio. The faster you go, the more reduced the ratio is. Or if you move the stick hard and fast, the ratio temporarily increases or something. With such a system, subtle maneuvers should be easy and accurate.
Re:Power Steering failure? (Score:4, Insightful)
Very good point. I've run out of gas twice
Once is unlucky. Twice is incompetent.
Not if your gas guage is broke, or if you are.
Re:Johnny Cab (Score:2, Insightful)
The lack of a steering wheel might increase the risk of back and neck injury in an accident, however, due to the increased space you'd have to move in (even with an airbag).
Compared to the alternative of my body trying to occupy the same space as the steering column (or vice-versa)? Assuming a shoulder belt and head rest, the middle seat in the back is generally the safest seat in the car, precisely because there is less chance of a piece of the car intruding in your personal space.
Re:Johnny Cab (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing about a steering wheel vs. joystick is that the former translates a large change in angle to a much smaller change in wheel angle, while a joystick does the exact opposite. You could certainly engineer a joystick with similar characteristics, but it would take up a lot of room -- hence the invention of the steering wheel.
The minor corrections that we continuously, yet nearly unconsciously, make while driving would become burdensome when applied to a joystick. In a simulation like a video game, there are no road imperfections, steering dead zones, alignment, or tire balancing issues, and therefore mastering the joystick is quite possible (but by no means simple). Many games also employ variable stick-to-wheel angle ratios, so that a given stick angle at a low speed results in a larger change in wheel angle than at higher speed. These would likely be necessary for real vehicles, but they make it difficult to predict directional changes at a constant speed, and increasingly difficult with speed AND direction changes, since stick deflection must be increased or decreased as velocity changes.
Even absent such "assistant" technologies, without independent controls steering while changing velocity becomes more challenging, not less. Say you're braking around a turn, which is followed by a short length of straight road and a stop sign/light. With independent controls, you maintain more or less static pressure on the brake pedal, while allowing the steering wheel to return to its natural zero-angle position. With a joystick, you have to maintain that position backwards while deliberately moving toward the center X axis, which is a much more challenging proposition, especially with inertial forces.
Finally, the joystick necessarily either falls victim to one of two (or both) of the following:
1) gorilla-arm [wikipedia.org] when mounted in front of the driver, due to the fact that the operator can't rest any weight on the control.
2) When mounted at or near the console, it requires the exclusive use of the the closest arm, which can also lead to fatigue. In a console-mounted position, it's hard to imagine a positioning system as effective as tilt/telescopic steering wheels to compensate for differing arm lengths and seat positions (which reflect torso and leg length).
The steering wheel may be an old design, but they got it right.
Re:Johnny Cab (Score:1, Insightful)
In case you didn't realize this, either a roll-over (large vehicle) or sideways skid (small vehicle) takes you STRAIGHT FORWARD, which is even less desirable than a flatter-than-desired curve.
Re:Power Steering failure? (Score:3, Insightful)
Very good point. I've run out of gas twice
Once is unlucky. Twice is incompetent.
Not if your gas guage is broke, or if you are.
Oh, but both are marks of incompetence. On the first one, not getting your gas meter fixed when you know it is broken, or not suspecting that something is wrong when it doesn't go down, is a mark of basic incompetence. On the second, undertaking substantial travel without the money to do so... well, why is it not incompetence? (And if you know you're running low, why not use techniques to increase your efficiency so that you can get to the next gas station?)