Pedestrian Detection before Motor Vehicle Moving Off Maneuvers using
Ultrasonic Sensors in the Vehicle Front 2021-22-0007
Vehicles that start moving from a stationary position can cause fatal traffic
accidents involving pedestrians. Ultrasonic sensors installed in the vehicle
front are an active technology designed to alert drivers to the presence of
stationary objects such as rigid walls in front of their vehicles. However, the
ability of such sensors to detect humans has not yet been established.
Therefore, this study aims to ascertain whether these sensor systems can
successfully detect humans. First, we conducted experiments using four vehicles
equipped with ultrasonic sensor systems for vehicle-forward moving-off maneuvers
and investigated the detection distances between the vehicles and a pipe (1 m
long and having a diameter of 75 mm), child, adult female, or adult male. The
detections of human volunteers were evaluated under two different conditions:
front-facing and side-facing toward the front of each vehicle. Front-facing is
defined as the condition where the human faces the vehicle front, while
side-facing is that where the side of the human faces it. For both the
front-facing and side-facing conditions, the results indicated that the
sensor-detection distances for a child were shorter than those for the pipe,
whereas those for adults were less than or approximately equivalent to those for
the pipe. These results revealed that ultrasonic sensor systems for
vehicle-forward moving-off maneuvers can detect not only stationary objects but
also humans, indicating that ultrasonic sensors installed in the vehicle front
could possibly reduce the risk of vehicle-forward moving-off accidents involving
pedestrians.