Putting pedestrian safety in the driving seat

Creation date: 10 February 2006

Every year in the European Union there are over 9,000 deaths and 200,000 injured victims in road accidents in which pedestrians and cyclists collide with a car. Hoping to improve on these grim statistics, is a cutting-edge sensing system that could ultimately help to save the lives of vulnerable road users (VRUs).

“The concept is relatively straightforward,” explains Dr Marc-Michael Meinecke of Volkswagen, which is one of the chief partners in the IST-sponsored SAVE-U project along with other key industry players such as CEA, DaimlerChrysler, Faurecia, Mira, Siemens and VDO Automotive. “SAVE-U combines sensors such as radar, vision and infrared camera, as well as sensor fusion and actuators to increase safety for pedestrians. The main idea is that the sensors will recognise pedestrians and if a pedestrian has a high probability to collide with the vehicle then automatic braking will be initiated by the system,” he says.

The project, which officially ended in August, set out to develop an innovative pre-impact sensing platform that operates three different technologies of sensors simultaneously, and then fuses their data to protect cyclists and pedestrians under different weather and light conditions. The system comprises a radar network composed of several 24 GHz sensors working in parallel and an imaging system composed of passive infrared and colour video cameras.

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