“The development of predictive systems for vehicle safety is already a focus at Audi today. The information gleaned from this research provides significant value-added for our daily development work and is of vital importance for the next generation of vehicles, says Dr. Ulrich Widmann, Head of Vehicle Safety Development at AUDI AG. The engineers of AUDI AG and Audi Electronics Venture GmbH have looked into the future of active safety for three subprojects as part of the AKTIV research initiative. This field of research is focused on systems that intervene actively in the driving process and thus help to defuse critical situations and avoid accidents. AKTIV is derived from the German for “Adaptive and Cooperative Technologies for Intelligent Traffic. Over the course of a four-year research period, the project partners developed new driver assistance systems, information technologies and possible solutions for efficient traffic management with the aim of making future traffic safer and more fluid. “Safety for Pedestrians and Cyclists The aim of the “Safety for Pedestrians and Cyclists subproject is to enhance the safety of all traffic participants. The researchers identified typical accident scenarios, classified the associated injury severity and derived measures for a concept of action. To simulate the “seeing vehicle, the engineers built a test vehicle with a forward-looking, 3D-imaging sensor system. A processing unit for the 3D environmental data identifies the respective traffic situation and initiates a concept of action for braking and steering. This will enable potential accident situations involving pedestrians to be defused. “Active Emergency Braking and “Driving Safety and Attentiveness Audi is working on the next generation of active safety systems in the “Active Emergency Braking subproject. Going beyond the scope of the systems currently available in production vehicles, these systems also consider additional objects in the vehicles surroundings such as other traffic participants and guardrails in addition to the immediate object of the collision. This results in an earlier intervention point for automatically initiated braking to avoid an accident. The time of braking can also be advanced based on information about the driver. If the driver is distracted, he or she will not recognize the situation in time and react adequately. In these cases, it makes sense to initiate braking even sooner. The engineers at AEV GmbH use a camera-based observation system to determine the drivers level of attentiveness. A camera records the position of the head and the orientation of the drivers head. These data are then used to deduce the attentiveness of the driver. The new brake function presented at the event reflects Audis systematic philosophy of assisting the driver in critical situations, thus helping to avoid accidents or at least mitigate accident severity. The results of the three projects are flowing into ongoing series development of predictive vehicle safety systems and help to further enhance safety on the roads. |