Away from engineering

28 April 2008

Surrey University’s Dr David Windridge is to join other researchers as part of the €2.6m DIPLECS project, which aims to develop a cognitive system that protects drivers and pedestrians. During the three-year project, researchers will design an artificial cognitive system (ACS) capable of learning and adapting to real life situations, the dangers of which are often underestimated by drivers.

The main focus of the system is to offer assistance and advice to the driver of a car. The project aims to construct models based on the behaviour of drivers and predict what the driver should do when faced with a specific driving scenario. It will also have the capacity to extract and analyse key information from the environment and determine the future condition of the car if it enters into a collision.

Project partners will assess the architecture and its components within three different settings; offline with data recorded in a real vehicle; online in the real vehicle; and online for a model car. These different settings, claim the partners, will enable them to analyse different assistance capabilities, including general, passive real-time and active real-time, in a safe environment.