Purely out of curiousity: Is it physically possible for a sufficiently smart active suspension system defeat a conventional (i.e. solid bump on the road) speed bump?
If I remember correctly I saw a Bose demo where they were able to roll their car over speed bumps and it would stay completely level. I’m not sure if that completely negated their impact, but it looked like it from the video.
It only worked so well because they rigged the tests. The suspension was tuned for exactly each demonstration, it wouldn't work under normal mixed conditions. The system was also extremely heavy and used a boatload of power for the actuators.
A well-setup conventional suspension system works nearly as well for anything you would encounter in the real world, and it's a lot less expensive. Even Citroën (the kings of hydropneumatic active suspension) will be going with traditional suspension only from their next generation C5, despite being stalwarts of active suspension tech since the 1950s.
Having driven a C3 through southern Germany on vacation recently, I see their point. That silly little car was significantly more comfortable than my older, larger Peugeot sedan, and more comfortable than even the 1st-gen C5 my parents drive.
Conventional suspension tech has come a long, long way.
Ignoring street-legality and commercial feasibility, if the Bose suspension is automatically adjusted using feedback from e.g. LIDAR and/or depth cameras, wouldn't that solve the "tune for each demo" problem?
