General Motors has filed a patent application for an automatic wheel alignment detection system for a vehicle. CarBuzz discovered the patent, filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
The good news is that most of GM's high-end cars are already equipped with the necessary bits and pieces, so all this patent requires is a few thousand lines of coding. The first step in the process is using Inertial Measurement Units (IMU) to detect whether there's an "event" that may cause wheel misalignment. These sensors are scattered across any modern car. A prime example is the IMU located in an airbag sensor. It determines the severity of an accident and whether the airbag should be deployed, and it can also be used to detect minor impacts.
This is patent language for anything that might have an impact on wheel alignment, such as driving through a pothole, hitting a speed bump at a high speed, defective suspension components, and even a minor fender bender.
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