On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 03:06:25PM +0000, Roland Perry wrote:

ABS-style braking is the opposite of traction control. The former
automates the stopping of vehicles, that latter the acceleration.

They're both acceleration, just with a different sign :-)

Consider the case where you've got one wheel slipping - on ice, for
example. Without a diff lock or some other form of traction control lots
of power will go to that wheel and be wasted, instead of going to the
wheel that isn't slipping and where that power can actually be used.

To stop that happening you'd want to either automagically apply the diff
lock (but most vehicles don't have one, and adding one adds expense,
weight, and maintenance costs) or automagically apply a brake (which
modern vehicles already have automatic control over). So it's obvious
that it would be implemented by selectively braking individual wheels.
The only thing that makes it the opposite of ABS is that ABS
automatically *disengages* the brake, whereas traction control would
automatically *engage* it.

In other words, traction control is ABS with a different sign.

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