While I don't particularly mind loading any of my powersport vehicles into the back of our Honda Ridgeline, there's always a looming sense of danger. Not because I've had any mishaps, falls, or whiskey throttles that sent the machines flying. But because I've watched my fair share of mishaps, falls, and whiskey throttles that sent the machines flying.
There's always this nagging doubt when you do it yourself that you're going to end up on Ridiculousness or America's Funniest Home Videos. Forever haunted by your one simple miscalculation.
Polaris, however, aims to fix that, which is why the powersport giant has recently patented an autonomous system that'd let you park your UTV from the comfort of outside the cab, as well as load the machine into the back of your pickup's bed or trailer. Now when the machine goes flying, at least your face isn't plastered across the screen.
The patent is for "autonomous and semi-autonomous off-road vehicle control," and states "operators of off-road vehicles may find themselves in a variety of situations where automated assistance from the off-road vehicle itself could be helpful and even safety enhancing." That's pretty true, in my experience, as not everyone knows how to properly operate a UTV in all situations. Chief among them, parking and loading them safely.
As such, the patent details how Polaris uses its own proprietary autonomous systems to help customers load and unload vehicles from transport through a "method for autonomously loading an off-road vehicle having a vehicle controller in communication with a vehicle sensor, a plurality of vehicle operating systems and a human-machine interface, onto a platform of a transport vehicle." That's to say, the operator has some form of controller, whether it's its own device or through your phone, that can control the vehicle and safely load it onto a trailer, into the bed of a pickup, or into a parking spot that might be too narrow to open the doors.
In the patent, Polaris details that the system could work in a myriad of ways, either by "detecting a loading ramp associated with the transport vehicle using the vehicle sensor" or through "visually [detection] using an image located on the transport vehicle using the vehicle sensor." Likewise, Polaris' patent also states that the UTV could be controlled either through a remote control or by gestures, stating, through the use of "capturing multiple images of a vicinity around the vehicle using an image-capturing sensor of the vehicle...[the vehicle could analyze] the image data of the multiple received images from the image-capturing sensor of the vehicle to detect whether an operator of the vehicle is making vehicle-control gestures; associating the detected vehicle-control gesture with a vehicle-control command; and causing the vehicle to execute the vehicle-control command associated with the detected vehicle-control gesture."
That means you could, theoretically, point at something with your fingers and the Polaris UTV would go there by itself. Whoa.
As for when we'll see this tech in action, well, that's a good question. Based on how the patent drawings look, as well as off-the-shelf semi-autonomous tech currently is, and how relatively basic this would all be, I think sooner rather than later would be a good guess. But I'm not part of Polaris' product planning and we've seen even basic autonomous systems go through teething pains.
When it finally does drop, however, those aforementioned hysterical clip shows are going to be up a creek without a paddle in terms of finding funny videos of people unwittingly becoming human crash-test dummies.
