NIST Measures Performance of Auto Crash Warning

January 14, 2008 // Published as a news service by IHS

The NIST technology will be used by industry researchers and at the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to accelerate the development and commercialization of safety systems that alert drivers to potential crash hazards, both from forward or side collisions, as well as from running off the road.

DOT officials said such warning systems could save lives and substantially reduce the number and severity of injuries to motorists.

Preliminary tests with the NIST technology of prototype collision detection systems have revealed both potential benefits of the systems and areas that need improvement, NIST said.

According to DOT, of the 3.6 million rear-end, road departure and lane change crashes that occur each year in the U.S., 27,500 result in one or more fatalities - about three-quarters of the nation's yearly auto-related deaths.

DOT estimates that widespread deployment of advanced integrated driver assistance systems may reduce such collisions by 48%. The department formed a partnership with the automobile industry, called the Integrated Vehicle Based Safety Systems (IVBSS) initiative, to hasten deployment of advanced warning systems in the U.S. vehicle fleet.

To evaluate the performance of crash warning systems, which generally use radar, researchers needed an accurate measurement tool based on entirely different principles. NIST researchers developed an independent measurement system (IMS) consisting of a camera and microphone in the cab to detect the driver warning, a suite of calibrated cameras to measure the distance to lane boundaries and laser scanners to measure the distance to obstacles forward and to the side of the vehicle.

The system can be mounted on cars or trucks with trailers and requires no modifications or connections to the warning system being tested. The NIST system can detect an object to within approximately eight-tenths of a meter from up to 60 meters away at speeds up to 25 meters/second (within 33 inches at a distance of 197 feet and speeds up to 56 mph).

NIST used the IMS to evaluate the performance of two systems built by IVBSS industry partners for a light vehicle and a heavy truck. Researchers collected data in representative crash-imminent driving scenarios in which a crash warning should be issued, as well as scenarios that might cause a system to issue a false alarm.

While both systems passed most of the 30-plus tests, the IMS revealed some warning system problems in detecting whether forward vehicles were in-lane or out-of-lane on curves or during lane changes. The IMS also measured significant warning delays that resulted in test failures.

Experts said such problems are common in automotive crash warning systems that must operate in real time, at highway speeds and which use multiple low-cost sensors to measure complex three-dimensional scenes.

DOT is analyzing the IMS data for consideration in further testing.

Source: National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).