From Adaptive Cruise Control to Active Safety Systems 2001-01-3245

Once the adaptive cruise control systems are already in the market in Japan and Europe, the evolution of these comfort systems is logically going towards implementing new additional functions and safety strategies in order to detect and actuate in case of emergency. This transition has to be done in clear and precise steps to assure an easy adaptation to each improvement.

Driver assistance systems will play a major role in the future to minimise the risk and consequences of accidents and to increase the driving comfort level. The impact of such systems on traffic and society is briefly commented.

This paper discusses the need of new driver assistance systems and a possible roadmap for them. After a short introduction of present Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), and based on them, next possible functions are described.

Afterwards the possible technical implementation of this new advanced functions is presented, discussing the different dangerous or ambiguous scenarios against the vehicle could be faced. The necessary inputs to recognise the situations unequivocally are identified in order to implement a satisfactory actuation of the vehicle. According to this requirements, the characteristics demanded to the system are extracted and a possible architecture is proposed.

First tests carried out with a research prototype prepared by SEAT and the VW-Group Electronic Research Department are also reported.

Finally, in the summary section, the main conclusions are highlighted.