Collision warning system works in tune with driver attention

A team at Leeds University headed by Dr Natasha Merat and Prof Oliver Carsten has been awarded nearly £500,000 by the EPSRC for a project called FORWARN: Towards an intelligent Forward Collision Warning System.

‘What we’re trying to create is a forward collision warning [FCW] system that would know when the driver has detected the lead vehicle or obstacle and would also know when the driver hasn’t — so we would reduce unnecessary and annoying warnings for the driver,’ Carsten told The Engineer.

FCW systems use sensors and radar to scan the area ahead of the vehicle and aim to avoid rear-end collisions, or reduce their impact, by advising drivers to brake. Some newer systems even intervene in some cases to avoid a collision.

There are considerable potential benefits of such systems, which have recently been proven in a large-scale field operational test in North America. However, there is a danger that systems that have permanently fixed criteria will be viewed by a significant number of drivers as presenting too many ‘false’ or unwanted warnings. Indeed, in those US tests the drivers were keen to be able to tune the system to their personal preferences.