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Data fusion plays a central role in more and more automotive applications, especially for driver assistance systems. On the one hand the process of data fusion combines data and information to estimate or predict states of observed objects. On the other hand data fusion introduces abstraction layers for data description and allows building more flexible and modular systems. The data fusion process can be divided into a low-level processing (tracking and object discrimination) and a high level processing (situation assessment). High level processing becomes more and more the focus of current research as different assistance applications will be combined into one comprehensive assistance system. Different levels/strategies for data fusion can be distinguished: Fusion on raw data level, fusion on feature level and fusion on decision level. All fusion strategies can be found in current driver assistance implementations.

The low-cost segment in the emerging markets requires highly flexible, scalable and cost-attractive products. Continental is pursuing a completely new development approach for central body control. Instead of the traditional individual optimization on the component level, the scope of the optimization is the complete architecture. The carmaker gets a cost optimized electronic solution that is adapted to its specific needs.

During light to moderate braking at high speeds the appearance of hot spots can often be observed on the brake disc surfaces. Such hot spots are mostly periodically distributed in the disc's circumference. The occurrence of hot spots leads to negative effects concerning driving comfort. This paper presents a description of the cause-and-effect chain of the mechanisms leading to the emergence of hot spots and thermal judder during the braking process.

Mechanical properties of porous materials such as bones for example are controlled by the geometry and structure of the pore space. Traditionally, most attempts to understand the effect of pore structure on mechanical properties have assumed that the pores can be modeled as ellipsoids Eshelby [9] etc. Nevertheless pictures taken by SEM show that pore shapes are never as simple as circles or ellipses. But the use of real pore shapes in the modeling process has been hindered by the lack of analytical solutions for these shapes. Zimmermann [24] suggested that the pore compressibility Cpc scales approximately with where A is the area of the pore space and P is the perimeter surrounding the pore space. Forcing this scaling law to be exact for a circular hole leads to the approximation . Zimmerman [25] showed that this approximation has an error of less than 8% for all hypotrochoids and an error of about 23% for thin, crack-like pores, which he suggested might be the "worst-case" shape.

To understand the NVH mechanism of tire/road noise better than in the past, it is essential to look at the complete sound and vibration field around a tire. Regarding this challenge measurements with a microphone array were performed in the time domain at different speeds, different loads and different inflation pressures. In this paper first results from the measurements and the calculations for a blank tire are presented. Results from a modal analysis are compared with vibration calculation from sound field measurements around a standing tire excited by a shaker and it is shown how the vibrations are changed when the tire is rolling. The measured signals were used as input for an Inverse Boundary Element Method (IBEM) calculation of the tire vibration for both non-rolling and rolling. The outer surface of the loaded tire for the IBEM was calculated with in-house FEM software. The IBEM model also incorporates the test rig surface.

Auto industry faces twin problems of pollution and exorbitant rise in petroleum prices. These two problems are best addressed by reducing the weight of the body structure. Under the current technology reduction in weight of an automobile is accomplished by replacing metal with synthetic composites. Reduced weight of the body structure economizes on fuel consumption but this method does not solve the problem of containing pollution because synthetic fibers are used. However, the authors in this paper suggest the use of Hybrid Composites which substantially reduces body weight of an automobile and simultaneously addresses the pollution problem. This is done by substituting natural fibers for synthetic fibers. From an engineering stand point Natural Fibers in the form of Banana Fibers, Sisal, Jute, Coir could prove to be potential competitors to synthetic fibers currently used in polymer composites such as E-Glass, S-Glass, Basalt, Carbon/ Graphite Fibers, and KEVLAR-49.

Automotive industry is going through a massive digital transformation to enable advance ADAS functions like cruise control, safety and parking assist. To develop and test advance and complex deep neural network-based AI/ML ADAS models, the need of huge amount of rich and diverse annotated data is utmost important. Over the past decade it has been observed that annotation complexity has increased tremendously and evolved from a simple bounding box to complex annotations like segmentation, 3D bounding box, key points etc. that too with multiple sensor integration. Hence such stupendous annotation task cannot be executed inhouse unlike in the past, companies choose to outsource time consuming and labor-intensive task to third party vendors. Hence annotation becomes an additional and unexpected challenge in ADAS function development, which urge the need for standard annotation format.

In recent years of research activities within the field of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), it became more and more obvious, that the present standard representation of the current state of a vehicle's environment is not sufficient anymore. Experience has shown that for functions addressed in the years ahead, there is a strong need for more dense environmental models, than the commonly used object lists. Many proposals have been made towards this direction; these are discussed in this work. Based on this overview, we propose a so called “Hybrid Environmental Model” approach for meeting requirements of future ADAS functions by complementing the existing solutions with a dense, grid-based representation. Additionally, methods are discussed which enhance the efficiency of data transport and therefore enable a potential series application of this approach.

Continental Automotive Systems started development of an electromechanical brake-by-wire system (EMB) 2 years ago. A major part of the development deals with the control of the brake actuator. For the development of control algorithms a special test stand was built. It consists of the seat capsule, the actuator and the PC-based electronic control unit. As the electronic unit also performs a real time vehicle and actuator simulation a complete Hardware-in- the-Loop system supports simultaneous engineering within this project. This paper describes the Hardware-in-the-Loop development system and shows first results obtained in an early state of the development process.

In the scope of an SEA project for high frequency tire NVH prediction, use is made of the spatial distribution of “modal power” on the entire surface of a tire, at both the modeling and validation stages. This paper focuses on the model development stage and how the modal power is used to determine the size of the SEA subsystems. Two key results are that, because of large damping, the spatial decay of vibration energy is too great and would require a large number of SEA subsystems. This is a confirmation on the limits of SEA in highly damped systems. It is also found that, in the frequency range where SEA would be useful, the tire's vibration response is concentrated around ⅓ of the tire closer to the excitation location. Experimental results are used to draw more insight into high frequency tire NVH behavior. The paper covers theoretical concepts, measurement setup, data processing, and concludes with useful results.

Autonomous Driving is the next big thing in the Automotive future. With growing automation, there is also growing need for In-cabin and Occupant monitoring. Impaired driving as a cause constitute a statistically major portion of the total accidents in the world. Additionally, the aging society of road users add to health concerns of possible drivers behind the wheel which might lead to severe accidents. Since the accident and the associated damage would have been occurred due to incapacitated drivers in the first place, there arises a need to know the state of drivers while driving to ensure the safety of him and other road users. Therefore, the monitoring of the driver's state and detection of any deviation from the suitable driving condition is significant to reduce the number of accidents on the road. One of the efficient ways to know the drivers’ state is to monitor the health - physical, mental and emotional, of the drivers essentially.

Though there are active safety features in the passenger cars, unfortunately not all accidents are avoidable. Airbags are the passive safety feature which avoid occupants in colliding with the car interiors and help to mitigate the fatal injuries. Trend and interest in the recent times is to study the occupant injury for front row seats. The second-row occupants are usually protected with the passive safety systems by Seat belts, Inflatable Curtain airbags, seat airbags, Windshield airbags etc. These are installed in the side and rear areas of car to pass on the regulations like FMVSS, ECE and other global standards. This particular case study is to evaluate or say how effective are the occupants in the second rows if they are unbelted. In few of the crash tests and experiment of frontal impact collision, the child dummies will be placed on female dummy lap without wearing the seat belt. In this, we see the second-row occupants will be seriously injured in most of the cases.

This paper presents a unified framework for addressing NVH related issues attributed to tire uniformity and Brake rotor DTV. While the focus is on the perceptible manifestation of such vibration (nibble), the presentation goes to the root-cause of nibble and how various suspension/tire/brake components contribute to the generation/amplification of such vibration. While the tire/brake excitation mechanisms have different origins, they cause the same (nibble) symptom to the driver. Results are presented for three types of vehicle suspensions, along with procedures that were developed specifically for this study and some of the understanding that was gained.. Also presented is an efficient data reduction scheme that makes it easy to visualize 3D motions of suspension components and investigate their dynamics.

Riveting is a process used to fasten printed circuit board to housing that offers several advantages compared to screws. This involves a cylindrical pin that protrudes from the housing being compressed with a concave tool to produce a rivet head that fills the PCB hole and holds it in place over service life of the component. The process as performed currently in-house uses parameters that have not been optimized. Testing has revealed that the process is subjecting the PCB to surface strains higher than 1000μɛ which is the limit as recommended by standards. Exceeding this limit reduces the reliability of electrical components and increases risk of field failures. This risk can be mitigated by improving the riveting process parameters to prevent high strain from reaching components. Having a finite element model for high deformation problems is an essential prerequisite to explore riveting process improvement.