Leading German companies from the automobile industry and the telecommunications and software development sectors are today presenting the results of AKTIV, one of Germany’s most important road safety projects, to Parliamentary State Secretary Peter Hintze. The declared aim of this four-year research initiative launched back in September 2006 is to further enhance active road safety, relieve drivers and harmonise traffic flows. Involved in many of the initiative’s subprojects, Volkswagen AG is an important partner in this research project sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology.
“Volkswagen has set the goal of developing innovative driver assistance systems for safer and more sustainable mobility. Volkswagen Group Research thus views AKTIV as one of its flagship projects and is striving to transform the project results into production-ready products as quickly as possible,” commented Dr. Jürgen Leohold, Head of Volkswagen Group Research, at today’s wrap-up event in Mendig.
Pedestrian and Cyclist Safety (“AKTIV-SFR”)
In the “Pedestrian and Cyclist Safety” subproject, Volkswagen is working on a system to increase safety for pedestrians and cyclists. In the past decades, a great deal of engineering has gone into making new vehicles safer for pedestrians. Specially designed soft bumpers, which significantly reduce injuries, are one particularly noteworthy passive protection measure.
In addition to these passive measures, Volkswagen has also researched active systems providing extra safety. Using cameras and radar sensors installed on the vehicle, the vehicle constantly monitors its surroundings, paying particular attention to pedestrians and cyclists. The sensors enable unprotected road users and their direction of travel to be detected several meters in front of the vehicle. The installed software then analyses the situation, determining whether it is serious or could even result in a collision.
If a critical traffic situation like this is recognised, the vehicle will brake automatically. The objective is to reduce the vehicle’s speed as much as possible to minimise the consequences of the accident or, ideally, to prevent the accident from happening in the first place.
This Volkswagen-developed vehicle goes beyond automatic braking to provide an additional protection system. If the sensor system detects that one of the front corners of the vehicle is about to collide with a pedestrian, a driver steering recommendation will be activated to avoid the collision. In this case, the driver will feel the steering wheel gently turn to swerve around the pedestrian. Although the driver can override the steering recommendation, following the recommendation will ideally prevent the collision.
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