xcel
09-19-2009, 05:13 PM
http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/2/European_Union_Flag.jpg "One step closer to accident-free mobility." (cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?p=233565)
http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/501/BMW_Active_Sensory_accident_prevention.jpgWayne Gerdes - CleanMPG (cleanmpg.com) - Sept. 18, 2009
BMW Active Sensory accident prevention at work.
The road-safety vision of the future haven now been clearly defined as "Vision Zero (Accident-Free Mobility)" and "Safety for All". The "Ko-FAS" (Cooperative Vehicle Safety) research initiative has set a goal of implementing these visions. It wants to make a contribution towards making accident-free mobility a reality.
"In the future, maintaining safe conditions on the road will require extensive cooperation between road users. This interplay is bringing the Ko-FAS initiative one step closer to achieving its aim of accident-free mobility," says Dr. Ralph Rasshofer, member for the BMW Group in the steering committee of the Ko-FAS initiative.
The best-possible accident protection that an automobile manufacturer could provide motor vehicle drivers with is active safety. According to official statistics, less than two percent of accidents are caused by technical malfunctioning, while the vast majority can be attributed to human error. This means that it is important that the driver is afforded a maximum level of support behind the wheel, to prevent the circumstances that cause accidents from even occurring.
It is against this background that the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology launched the Ko-FAS research initiative. Its aim is to achieve a significant increase in road safety and fatalities by reducing roadway accidents. This vision will necessitate finding ways to reliably map the driving environment with the aid of onboard and infrastructure sensory and perceptive based systems creating situational awareness far beyond that available today. The system will assess collision risks and activate appropriate active preventive measures.
The joint project involves 19 partners, including vehicle manufacturers and parts suppliers, universities and institutes of applied sciences, as well as research institutes throughout the Germany. A total budget of 35 million USD’s has been made available to the project partners for the 4-year project duration.
Three joint projects – one goal
The Ko-FAS initiative comprises three joint projects, known as Ko-TAG, Ko-PER and Ko-KOMP. The research and technology department of the BMW Group is heading the Ko-TAG and Ko-PER projects.
Ko-TAG
The specialists involved in the Ko-TAG project will be conducting research in the field of Car2Tag communication, which employs a network of transponders whose function it is to precisely locate and classify objects using cooperative sensory systems. The aim is to employ this technology to protect particularly vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and cyclists but it is also to be used in the area of vehicle-vehicle safety.
Employees of BMW Group Research and Technology successfully developed the first pedestrian protection system to be based on this kind of technology during the previous AMULETT project. It involved a test vehicle which exchanged wireless data with an active module, similar to RFID. This cooperative sensor technology would make it possible to locate such individuals and classify them as vulnerable road users who are not visible to the driver at the moment in which the risk situation occurs.
Ko-TAG will use the findings of the AMULETT project as a starting point. Researchers are particularly interested in such questions as how this radio technology can be employed in more intense situations including those in which many people are involved.
"In the future, this radio technology will allow us to draw extremely precise and highly reliable assumptions from the sensory data. This will in turn provide us with a means of effecting yet another considerable improvement in road safety," explains Daniel Schwarz of BMW Group Research and Technology, and project spokesman for Ko-TAG.
Ko-PER
The Ko-PER project is responsible for research into the process of cooperative perception in traffic at intersections.
"For this project, we are supported by the findings of the successfully concluded EU research 'PReVENT' project, but what we are now also looking for is an active exchange with the national 'simTD' (Safe Intelligent Mobility Test Field for Germany) support project. The various research activities all lead towards the same joint goal – to increase the level of safety on the roads," says Dr. Reiner Wertheimer, Ko-PER project spokesman for BMW Group Research and Technology.
The BMW researchers involved in the Ko-PER project are looking into ways of utilizing cooperative sensory networks for mapping traffic environments. The aim is to create an overall picture of the immediate traffic environment by exchanging and merging information from various sensors, employed to gather data in both vehicle environments and transport infrastructures. What researchers are aiming for is a way of revealing hidden road users and identifying the dynamic chronology of road risk based events. This will make it possible to conduct a constant and comprehensive assessment of existing collision risks.
Ko-KOMP
The members of the Ko-KOMP project will be looking at protection systems for vehicles which are activated prior to an impending collision and whose aim it is to prevent an accident from occurring or at least tempering the consequences of an impending accident. In particular, the project will involve examining systems for expanding the external vehicle shell and effecting the timely activation of autonomous emergency-brake functions. Also planned is a virtual test field for simulating communications channels for diverse road traffic scenarios.
http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/501/BMW_Active_Sensory_accident_prevention.jpgWayne Gerdes - CleanMPG (cleanmpg.com) - Sept. 18, 2009
BMW Active Sensory accident prevention at work.
The road-safety vision of the future haven now been clearly defined as "Vision Zero (Accident-Free Mobility)" and "Safety for All". The "Ko-FAS" (Cooperative Vehicle Safety) research initiative has set a goal of implementing these visions. It wants to make a contribution towards making accident-free mobility a reality.
"In the future, maintaining safe conditions on the road will require extensive cooperation between road users. This interplay is bringing the Ko-FAS initiative one step closer to achieving its aim of accident-free mobility," says Dr. Ralph Rasshofer, member for the BMW Group in the steering committee of the Ko-FAS initiative.
The best-possible accident protection that an automobile manufacturer could provide motor vehicle drivers with is active safety. According to official statistics, less than two percent of accidents are caused by technical malfunctioning, while the vast majority can be attributed to human error. This means that it is important that the driver is afforded a maximum level of support behind the wheel, to prevent the circumstances that cause accidents from even occurring.
It is against this background that the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology launched the Ko-FAS research initiative. Its aim is to achieve a significant increase in road safety and fatalities by reducing roadway accidents. This vision will necessitate finding ways to reliably map the driving environment with the aid of onboard and infrastructure sensory and perceptive based systems creating situational awareness far beyond that available today. The system will assess collision risks and activate appropriate active preventive measures.
The joint project involves 19 partners, including vehicle manufacturers and parts suppliers, universities and institutes of applied sciences, as well as research institutes throughout the Germany. A total budget of 35 million USD’s has been made available to the project partners for the 4-year project duration.
Three joint projects – one goal
The Ko-FAS initiative comprises three joint projects, known as Ko-TAG, Ko-PER and Ko-KOMP. The research and technology department of the BMW Group is heading the Ko-TAG and Ko-PER projects.
Ko-TAG
The specialists involved in the Ko-TAG project will be conducting research in the field of Car2Tag communication, which employs a network of transponders whose function it is to precisely locate and classify objects using cooperative sensory systems. The aim is to employ this technology to protect particularly vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and cyclists but it is also to be used in the area of vehicle-vehicle safety.
Employees of BMW Group Research and Technology successfully developed the first pedestrian protection system to be based on this kind of technology during the previous AMULETT project. It involved a test vehicle which exchanged wireless data with an active module, similar to RFID. This cooperative sensor technology would make it possible to locate such individuals and classify them as vulnerable road users who are not visible to the driver at the moment in which the risk situation occurs.
Ko-TAG will use the findings of the AMULETT project as a starting point. Researchers are particularly interested in such questions as how this radio technology can be employed in more intense situations including those in which many people are involved.
"In the future, this radio technology will allow us to draw extremely precise and highly reliable assumptions from the sensory data. This will in turn provide us with a means of effecting yet another considerable improvement in road safety," explains Daniel Schwarz of BMW Group Research and Technology, and project spokesman for Ko-TAG.
Ko-PER
The Ko-PER project is responsible for research into the process of cooperative perception in traffic at intersections.
"For this project, we are supported by the findings of the successfully concluded EU research 'PReVENT' project, but what we are now also looking for is an active exchange with the national 'simTD' (Safe Intelligent Mobility Test Field for Germany) support project. The various research activities all lead towards the same joint goal – to increase the level of safety on the roads," says Dr. Reiner Wertheimer, Ko-PER project spokesman for BMW Group Research and Technology.
The BMW researchers involved in the Ko-PER project are looking into ways of utilizing cooperative sensory networks for mapping traffic environments. The aim is to create an overall picture of the immediate traffic environment by exchanging and merging information from various sensors, employed to gather data in both vehicle environments and transport infrastructures. What researchers are aiming for is a way of revealing hidden road users and identifying the dynamic chronology of road risk based events. This will make it possible to conduct a constant and comprehensive assessment of existing collision risks.
Ko-KOMP
The members of the Ko-KOMP project will be looking at protection systems for vehicles which are activated prior to an impending collision and whose aim it is to prevent an accident from occurring or at least tempering the consequences of an impending accident. In particular, the project will involve examining systems for expanding the external vehicle shell and effecting the timely activation of autonomous emergency-brake functions. Also planned is a virtual test field for simulating communications channels for diverse road traffic scenarios.