Ford Makes Hitching a Trailer as Quick and Simple as Possible With AI-Powered Technology

If you’ve ever hitched a trailer to your truck, you know it can be a frustrating ordeal, especially when others are watching and waiting. Even if you do this on a day-to-day basis, perfectly positioning the truck’s hitch ball under the trailer hitch couple is still hard at times.

We’ve been using automated systems to aid us in parking our vehicles, so Ford thought, why not apply the technology for hitching trailers? The industry-first Ford Pro Trailer Hitch Assist uses AI (artificial intelligence) to make hitching a truck and trailer as easy as pushing a button. It’s available for the F-150, F-150 Lightning, and the new F-Series Super Duty.

But how does it work? Using the rear camera and corner radars, the system aligns the hitch with the trailer coupler and simultaneously controls the truck’s speed, steering, and braking to stop at precisely the right place. Moreover, it can detect the hitch ball, trailer, and coupler at distances of up to approximately 20 feet (6 meters).

First, the customers must verify that the coupler is higher than the hitch ball. To turn the technology on, they simply need to push and hold a button while keeping an eye on the truck’s large center screen display. As the vehicle slowly backs up, the system analyzes the ideal path and makes the necessary corrections, steering the car into the right spot.

Of course, even the most experimented drivers sometimes make alignment mistakes and waste time correcting them. The Pro Trailer Hitch Assist is engineered to make the hitching process as smooth and quick as possible while providing customers with more confidence when backing up to a trailer.

Ford created the technology in-house, with over 60 patents submitted over its development. The company’s Advanced Driver Assistance System team used a large volume of data to perfect the system’s machine learning algorithms, which can detect a vast range of trailers of varied sizes and types.

Pro Trailer Hitch Assist is part of a suite of driver-assist technologies already available for the F-Series. For instance, the Pro Trailer Backup Assist helps customers by indicating which direction the trailer should go while reversing into position. Another useful technology is Smart Hitch – it calculates a trailer’s tongue weight and provides guidance on weight distribution or hitch overloading.

No matter how much I detail the all-new Pro Trailer Hitch Assist in words, the best way to understand how the new technology works is by seeing it in action – check out the video below.