Honda’s Rolls-Royce-Level Active Suspension Brings Rally Technology To The Road

CarBuzz has discovered another new patent for potentially game-changing suspension, this time from Honda. The patent was discovered at the World Intellectual Property Office and uses a principle for calculating body movement that is often employed in the world of rally motorsport development. As explained by WRC Wings, optical sensors placed underneath the front and rear bulkhead of the car can help the rally team to glean insights into body movements, including roll, pitch, and yaw. This technology can help the team better understand the speed, lateral movements, braking ability, and other characteristics of a package. All of this data is then used to set the suspension up in the most ideal manner for the coming rally stage. This sort of development ultimately led to the epic Toyota GR Corolla, but Honda has a more luxury-focused application in mind.

Honda is taking this concept and expanding upon it, using a similar system to evaluate the vehicle body in depth but also the tire as it moves over the ground. This, the patent reveals, can help a suspension system perfectly predict how to compensate for imperfections in the road.

Sensors Read The Road Ahead Of The Front Wheel

The patent says that the body movement and the deformation of each tire could be evaluated using infrared or laser technology, but optical cameras and radar sensors are also mentioned. These sensors, placed just ahead of each wheel and aimed at the road, would measure the relationship between vehicle speed and tire contact length at a predetermined tire pressure, as well as that between tire air pressure and tire contact patch at a predetermined vehicle speed.

Using these two datasets, the car would be able to calculate how much the road surface is affecting the movement and deformation of each tire. With all that information, Honda intends to have the adaptive suspension system of a future vehicle, potentially a more luxury-focused product like the Acura TLX, react preemptively to imperfections and deviations in the road surface. A plurality of sensor types could be useful for redundancy, particularly since an optical sensor may not be able to detect road imperfections on snow as accurately as a laser or radar sensor, for example.

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Honda Developing Seats With Built-In Suspension System

These shocks can absorb the additional load impact not already absorbed by external shocks.

Similar Technologies Have Been Eyed By Other Automakers

Honda’s system compensates for the delay between the suspension system getting a signal and the sensor detecting a bump ahead of the wheel, and it even makes provision for how the angle of the front wheels during steering would affect each wheel, including the trailing rear wheels. Will it make production? Well, the downsides include additional complexity and cost, as well as the concern of whether the sensors would be prone to damage or failure in such a vulnerable area of the car. With that in mind, we doubt the system will find its way to the next Civic. That being said, this is not the most extreme suspension idea we’ve come across; last year, Ferrari developed bodywork that moves with suspension.

It’s also worth noting this is not the first time suspension systems have read the road to adapt. Mercedes-Benz is the most notable brand to offer such, but it uses forward-facing cameras that pre-prime the suspension ahead of time. This camera-based system might not be as accurate as Honda’s new tech, though, which doesn’t just read larger bumps and dips but reads the surface itself.