This story started back in January 2022 at the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas, where GM CEO Mary Barra revealed that the Cadillac CELESTIQ, the Halo top-of-the-line car for Cadillac, would debut the next generation of Super Cruise, Ultra Cruise.
To ensure maximum coverage of its surroundings, vehicles equipped with Ultra Cruise would use the following:
- High-resolution cameras
- Short and Long-range radar
- Sonar
- Lidar
Super Cruise a less sophisticated system is already available on almost all GM vehicles allowing for hands free driving on over 400,000 roadways that GM has mapped out.
GM is claiming that with Ultra Cruise, it will handle 95% of roadways, including those in dense urban settings. Ultra Cruise sensor Suite at the time of the announcement at CES.
 
With this information, GM announced today, March 7th, 2023, that Ultra Cruise will debut with a unique sensor suite, providing the system with a 360-degree view of the vehicle's surroundings.
Per the GM press release:
How Ultra Cruise’s sensor suite works:
GM is developing Ultra Cruise software in-house with a team of highly skilled software engineers worldwide. The company also works with suppliers who are experts in their relative spaces and integrates their sensing technologies with its homegrown software to bring Ultra Cruise to life.
- Driver attention system: This small camera, located on the top of the steering column, uses infrared light to help monitor the driver’s head position and/or eyes in relation to the road to help ensure driver attention.
- Compute platform: This is the physical hardware that enables Ultra Cruise. The system will be powered by a scalable compute architecture featuring system-on-chips (SoCs) developed by American semiconductor company Qualcomm Technologies.
- Long-range cameras: These seven, eight-megapixel cameras are located on the front, corners, back and sides of the vehicle, providing expanded fields of view for Ultra Cruise. They help the system detect objects such as traffic signs, traffic lights, other vehicles, and pedestrians.
- Short-range radars: Placed on the four corners of the vehicle, these radars help sense a radius of up to 90 meters, like pedestrians crossing the street or vehicles in surrounding lanes.
- Long-range radars: The three 4D long-range radars on the front and back of the vehicle allow for Adaptive Cruise Control speeds and lane change maneuvers at highway speeds by helping to detect an object’s location, direction and elevation relative to the speed of the vehicle. They also help the system determine safe stopping distances.
- LiDAR: The LiDAR, located behind the windshield, helps produce an accurate three-dimensional view of the scene, enabling more precise detection of objects and road features such as vehicles and lane markings, even in inclement weather conditions. Combined with other sensors, it can help create a robust perception of the environment around the vehicle for Ultra Cruise, increasing the system’s functional domain and performance.
GM chief engineer for Ultra Cruise, Jason Ditman stated the following:
“GM’s fundamental strategy for all ADAS features, including Ultra Cruise, is safely deploying these technologies.”  “A deep knowledge of what Ultra Cruise is capable of, along with the detailed picture provided by its sensors, will help us understand when Ultra Cruise can be engaged and when to hand control back to the driver. We believe consistent, clear operation can help build drivers’ confidence in Ultra Cruise.”Â
GM's philosophy for the company is safely deploying advanced driver assistance (ADAS) technologies as a guiding strategy. The destination-to-destination hands-free system will use more than just cameras to “see” the world. Ultra Cruise uses a blend of cameras, short- and long-range radars, LiDAR behind the windshield, an all-new computing system, and a driver attention system to monitor the driver’s head position and/or eyes in relation to the road to help ensure driver attention. These systems work together through “sensor fusion” to provide Ultra Cruise with a confident, 360-degree, three-dimensional representation of the vehicle’s surroundings.
The all-new computing system GM mentions is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 Automotive Platform. This is a power-efficient and customizable system designed for incredible speed for lightning-fast responses. Qualcomm built this system to be a connected, intelligent, aware platform that can be upgraded over the air (OTA) and grow as a company needs.Â
The Snapdragon system has the following features:
- Optional integrated super-fast LTE Advanced connectivity
- Automotive heterogeneous compute processor with machine learning
- 64-bit Qualcomm® Kryo™ CPU architecture – high performance with support for ARM V8/Hypervisor
- Qualcomm® Adreno™ 530 GPU with improved performance for advanced graphics and 4K resolution
- Support for multiple camera sensors and high-resolution 4K displays
- Zeroth Machine Intelligence Platform supporting cognitive computing and computer vision for real-time recognition of potential hazards on the road
- Scalable platforms allowing integrated driver assistance features such as turn-by-turn navigation overlaid on live camera data.
Those that are tech-focused and want to learn more can click here for additional information on the Snapdragon Automotive Platform.
While Super Cruise, GM's first hands-free driving system, was a Level 2 autonomous driving system, Ultra Cruise will be moving forward to be a full-functioning Level 3 and above system as GM pushes out OTA updates to the system.
Debuting on the Cadillac CELESTIQ in 2024, Ultra Cruise will be offered to start in 2025 on all top-of-the-line EV models, with Super Cruise covering the rest of the automaker's portfolio.
GM's Super Cruise and Ultra Cruise autonomous technology is developed and field-tested through their Cruise subsidiary. This unit is the first company authorized to serve ride-hailing customers in San Francisco.
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