Future Vehicle Safety Technology: 360 Sensor Fusion
Last year, the nation experienced millions of vehicles being recalled due to safety related defects. Now, the industry appears to not only be working to correct those defects, but to create new safety technologies to prevent crashes and deaths. Nearly 1.3 million people die in car crashes every year. That is over 3,000 deaths a day. Car crashes also cost the nation $518 billion.
Many technology suppliers are working hard to bring down those statistics. Autonomous emergency braking and lane departure warning will hopefully be required in new vehicles as they are in trucks and buses in Europe. These systems have potential to reduce crashes by up to 27%.
Future technologies are already being developed that will increase vision of the sensors to have a 360 degree view. Once those sensors are put into place, they will fuse them with active safety features such as braking to prevent accidents. Delphi, a supplier of vehicle technologies, has been working on what they call RACam. It is a radar and camera system, which combines radar sensing, vision sensing and data. The ‘sensor fusion’ as they call it, will also combine adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning, forward collision warning, low speed collision mitigation and autonomous emergency braking. Systems will be specific to the type/size of vehicle. For example, trucks will need more time to stop due to their weight.
Even though these safety features are good in theory, and can in fact save lives, they can have defects. It is important that these technology developers do thorough research and testing to make sure flaws are eliminated before these systems reach vehicles.
Source: Automotive World