VW Designs Stroller After Facebook Comment
In the Netherlands, VW has released a new commercial advertising its cars with collision avoidance. In the ad, a mother pushes a stroller off of a display and it crashes into the other strollers around it. The mother isn’t satisfied, because they are much less safe than her VW vehicle, which can stop itself to avoid an accident.
You can check it out the original ad below. Unfortunately, there is no English version, but it’s pretty easy to understand what’s going on.
When the brand posted the commercial on its Danish Facebook page, Timo Ros commented that it would be great if there actually was an automatic braking system on strollers. What Ros didn’t know was that Volkswagen would take the idea and run with it. Take a look at the development of the stroller equipped with automatic braking and meet the VW engineers behind it in the (subtitled) video below.
Volkswagen engineers added the automatic braking system, but they didn’t stop there. They also used an adaptive cruise control sensor from a VW Golf to actually move the stroller forward and keep it at a exact distance from the people it follows.
The father that experiments with the stroller pushes it towards a wall, and the stroller stops in time to avoid impact. Using the cruise control system, he has the stroller follow him around town (to the concern of many bystanders). The last shot of the commercial is the new stroller actually rocking its passenger to sleep because it is parked in front of a swing, so it backs up to avoid impact and moves forward when the swing does.
It just goes to show that you have no idea what will happen when you post on Facebook.
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