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07/12/2010
By MURRAY HUBBARD
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There can hardly be any more sickening feeling for a driver the moment you realise you are about to hit a pedestrian. For others those who simply did not see a pedestrian – through being distracted or a pedestrian suddenly appearing – the feeling must be similar as the thump of human flesh on metal signals a life-changing event.
“When two tonnes of metal meet 80 kg of flesh it’s not nice … you do the sums,” said Volvo’s Senior Technical Advisor, Volvo Car Safety, Thomas Proberg. Mr Proberg was talking at a demonstration of the Volvo Pedestrian Detection system, which has been introduced on the 2011 Volvo S60. In Australia that life changing event last year took the lives of 183 people and represents 13 per cent of our total road toll.
As good as Volvo’s new system is Mr Proberg is first to admit it will not save every pedestrian from death or serious injury, even if it were employed on every car on the roads. But of 3500 pedestrians killed on European Union roads last year, 400 would have been saved had every car adopted the technology. What does emerge from Volvo’s study of pedestrian collisions is that inattention is a major factor in collisions with the vehicle in front and that in 47 per cent of those crashes, there was no attempt by the driver to take evasive action. Volvo’s new Pedestrian Detection system is aimed at firstly altering the driver to the potential pedestrian hazard and should driver not take action, technology takes over, braking the car. We tested the system at Brisbane’s Mt Cotton Driver Training Facility using a pedestrian dummy – basically a balloon of human form.
The system works using two technologies: radar and a camera both reading the same information in a 45 degree arc in front of the car. The radar is mounted in the grille while the camera is mounted on the windscreen in front of the rear-view mirror. The camera technology will be familiar to people who use digital cameras that have face recognition. This has been adapted by Volvo to recognise not just a face, but the human form including arms and legs and taller than 80cm, and follows those shapes as they move about.
When the combined technologies realise there is a potential risk it immediately sets of a series of alarms, and red warning lights on the windscreen – designed to emulate the appearance of the brake lights being applied to the vehicle in front. The immediate result is for the driver to hit his brakes. If there is no immediate driver intervention, then the system takes over by braking. We tested the system twice, both times letting the car take over as we headed towards our plastic pedestrian dummy. Both times we pulled up short by around a metre after heavy braking.
Volvo has tested the system for the past three years and covering more than 600,000 kilometres in real-world driving using vehicles such as taxis. Cameras monitored the results and allowed Volvo to fine tune the system taking into account the various situations that arose during testing. The system works best at speeds under 35 km/h. Mr Proberg said a major hurdle to overcome was getting the system to recognise only human forms so that it was not forever going off at false alarms such as bollards and other structures on the side of the road. |
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