Smarter Cars, Safer Pedestrians
Auto safety. The
phrase brings to mind seatbelts and car seats, antilock brakes and
airbags—devices that save countless
drivers and passengers every year. But none of these devices provides much
protection to pedestrians and cyclists, perhaps the most vulnerable
population of road users when they’re involved in a car crash.
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In
the SAVE-U system, radar sensors and cameras installed on the front
bumper detect pedestrians or cyclists in the car's path and initiate
braking if a collision is likely.
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In the European Union, where reportedly 9,000 people die and 200,000
are injured every year in car-pedestrian or car-cyclist collisions, a
consortium of automakers and tech companies, including Volkswagen,
DaimlerChrysler, and Siemens, have created and tested a prototype system
designed to improve those statistics. The goal of the system—called SAVE-U (a fitting but
somewhat-tortured acronym for Sensors and system Architecture for
VulnerablE road Users protection)—as
explained in technical papers presented about the project, is “to enhance
the safety of pedestrians in hazardous traffic situations before the crash
occurs.”
The SAVE-U system uses five single-beam 24GHz radar
sensors attached over the width of the front bumper to detect obstacles in
front of the car. The sensors also collect direction and velocity
information so that an algorithm can predict both the car’s and the
object’s trajectory over time. Two other cameras, one with color video and
one infrared, identify the object as a pedestrian
and.... |
