Engineers verify pedestrian detection systems in vehicles

The project is a collaboration between innovITS ADVANCE and TRL and centres around a customisable mechanical dummy and post-analysis with high-speed video.

Pedestrian detection systems have been in development for a number of years and are starting to find their way into commercial vehicles — most notably as an optional extra on the Volvo C60. The technology is still maturing, however, and has difficulty operating at night or in poor weather conditions, for example.

‘To get it absolutely right, you should detect all people that you’re going to potentially collide with, but not end up triggering and emergency braking the vehicle just because there’s someone walking along at the side of the road in front of you or people crossing the road,’ said Phil Pettitt, chief executive at innovITS.

The automotive industry is largely lacking in dummy systems providing a realistic representation of human form and gait to the vehicle’s on-board sensor systems.

‘There’s a lot of complex, intelligent technologies getting into vehicles, and they need to work every time as expected, so you have to develop them carefully over several years and deal with every eventuality, which does mean extensive testing,’ Pettitt said.