PReVENT Releases Report on Electronic Safety Zone for Vehicles

July 12, 2006

The Integrated Project (IP) PReVENT released Specifications and architecture for PReVENT safety functions. The report was presented at the Advanced Microsystems for Automotive Applications (AMAA) 2006 Conference in Berlin.

The IP PReVENT works to create electronic safety zones around vehicles by developing and demonstrating a set of complementary safety functions. These functions assist and protect drivers using in-vehicle systems that detect and assess the type and significance of the danger. Depending on the nature of the threat, active and preventive safety systems inform, warn and assist the driver in order to avoid an accident or mitigate its consequences.

This report is the fifth deliverable of IP PReVENT. The report describes PReVENT's overall architecture structure and principles, shows how the different applications complement each other to create an electronic safety zone around the vehicle and details the different subproject specifications.

The PReVENT architecture introduces a three-layer approach. Three basic layers are identified:

• Perception layer: uses sensors ranging from onboard sensors such as radar, cameras and laser-scanners to GPS signals in conjunction with digital maps and vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication.
• Decision or application layer: Assesses dangerous situations and determines what to do, passing the decision to the action layer.
• Action layer: issues warnings through an appropriate human-machine interface (HMI) or activates vehicle dynamics actuators such as steering and brakes as demanded by the threat level of a potential accident situation.

The full report is available in the deliverable section of the PReVENT web site (http://www.prevent-ip.org/en/public_documents/deliverables/).

Source: Integrated Project PReVENT.