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Within the EU PROTECTOR (Preventive Safety for Unprotected Road User, 2000-2002) project, the first-ever large-scale field tests on pre-impact pedestrian sensing were performed, both on the test track and in real urban traffic. Application context was driver warning. Research institutes IKA (Institut für Kraftfahrwesen Aachen) and TÜV Rheinland performed an independent system validation, both in terms of objective sensor performance and in terms of subjective user acceptance. The IKA sensor performance tests demonstrated that the early Daimler system was quite reliable at detecting any pedestrians as obstacles. More work was however needed to improve its object classification performance (i.e. distinguishing pedestrians from, say, traffic poles). The TÜV user acceptance tests showed that random drivers rated the early system quite favorably in terms of ”driving safety”, ”driving comfort”, ”worth buying” etc.
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source: TÜV Rheinland
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Within the successor project SAVE-U (Sensors and System Architecture for VulnerablE road User protection, 2002-2005), progress was made to improve the Daimler system performance by an order of magnitude in terms of reduction of false classifications, compared to PROTECTOR (see publication). Also, automatic vehicle braking capabilities were added.
One of the project highlights were undoubtedly the Pre-Crash tests with real pedestrians using the MIRA test rig.
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See below video clip of the test rig in action.
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0.43 Mb avi
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Here is a selection of public Deliverables from SAVE-U:
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SAVE-U Deliverable 1-A: Vulnerable Road User Scenario Analysis
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Detailed Pedestrian Accident Statistics (D, F, EU, USA) up to 2001: by Age, Location, Collision Opponent, Initial/Impact Speed, Weather, Accident Type, etc.
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SAVE-U Deliverable 6: Strategies in Terms of Vulnerable Road User Protection
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Active Hood/Bumper, Automatic Braking, Driver Warning, Night Vision, etc.
- Survey publications, patents, internet sites
- Discussion: classification of various actuator concepts, requirements for sensors
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Final Report SAVE-U
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Good summary of the achievements within the SAVE-U project.
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Within the current German AKTIV-SFR project (2006-2010), research continues on improving the video sensing systems. In particular, the aim is to obtain a commercially viable recognition performance under realisitc operating conditions (i.e. sensor coverage area, vehicle speed, visibility conditions)
The aim of the current EU WATCH-OVER project (2006-2008) is to further improve the pedestrian detection capabilities by combining video-based approaches with cooperative approaches (i.e. based on vehicle-vulnerable road user communication such as.RFID and UWB).
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