Gone are the days when vehicle safety was limited to just seatbelts. Developments in the automotive industry, ranging from ABS for cars and bikes, ESC for 4-wheelers, multiple airbags in a car, are making driving much safer.
Additionally, connected vehicles, which are becoming the norm today, are bringing in additional safety features while making the driving experience more comfortable. Head Of the Technical Centre for Continental Automotive India, Alexander Klotz mentions five safety technologies from Continental that are making the roads safer:
Autonomous Emergency Braking
Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) is a proactive and predictive driver assistance system that provides emergency braking assistance – or can even brake autonomously – if an accident risk is detected. This is done by integrating state-of-the-art driver assistance systems with Electronic Stability Control (ESC). The feature also helps reduce the impact speed if an accident is unavoidable.
Intelligent Intersection
Intelligent Intersection is a real-world, end-to-end solution that warns the driver of pedestrians or vehicles who are outside the driver’s line of sight. The technology comprises of a sensor set, powerful sensor fusion algorithms that generate a comprehensive environmental model, and Dedicated Short-Range Communication (DSRC) to transfer valuable information between the intersection and connected vehicles.
Also Read: Five Reasons To Own A Connected Car
The data collected through this can also be used to control signal changes, streamline traffic ensuring lower idling time at intersections. The concept is integral to protecting vulnerable road users (VRUs) such as pedestrians and cyclists and supports drivers in complex intersection traffic scenarios, like preventing left-turning cars from running head-on into traffic that approaches from behind an obstacle.
Occupant Safety Monitoring (OcSM)
While multiple airbags are the new features in cars, we believe that they can evolve further.OcSM acts as a monitor of the environment inside a vehicle in terms of safety, estimating the location and posture of the occupants to dynamically adapt airbag deployment. For example, if the driver is seated too close to the steering wheel (airbag deployment point), in case of a crash, he may hit the steering wheel before the airbag is properly deployed.
Contact Sensor System (CoSSy)
The CoSSy detects contact between a vehicle and a person or object at cutting speed. The recording of sound signals by CoSSy can be used to detect collision impact at low speed so that the vehicle can be stopped immediately. Once installed, the CoSSy sensor signals can support many other applications, such as detection of vandalism (scratching), slow parking knocks, recognition of the road condition, driver identification by voice, or detection of approaching emergency vehicles. CoSSy helps to make applications like automated parking safer.
Transparent Hood
Ever wondered how you missed that speed bump or pothole even when you were driving at low speed? The “transparent hood” feature makes that question obsolete. As the name indicates, this feature (which was first displayed at CES 2020) makes the area under the hood visible and allows the driver to see terrain and obstacles that would otherwise not be visible. An intelligent image processing algorithm reconstructs the image below the vehicle and inserts this image exactly into the surround-view displayed to the driver. The Transparent Hood technology fuses ultrasonic distance information with surround-view cameras to provide a 3D perspective, 360° around the vehicle and supports views both near the vehicle, as well as in the medium distance.