The development of IVSS concepts for better safety, business growth and competitiveness starts from an understanding of the interaction between the following three basic components in the road transport system:
The human being
Preventive solutions based on the vehicle’s most important component.
The road
Intelligent systems designed to increase security for all road users.
The vehicle
Active safety through pro-active technology.
IVSS is taking a needs–driven/problem–oriented approach and has identified three key problem areas for avoiding major road accidents:
1. ”Impaired drivers” or drivers with reduced capability as regards the primary driving task
• Drowsiness
• Driver distraction
• Alcohol/drunk drivers
• Drugs/drugged drivers
2. ”Speed – Sense, alert and respond” or the driver’s ability to adapt to the current or expected traffic situation. Increase driver/vehicle system ability to respond by
• Obstacle detection/vision enhancement
• Traffic & conflict management
• Performance/Speed adaptation
• Road condition monitoring
3. ”Just before the unavoidable” – crashworthiness / mitigation & biomechanics. Further research in the area is needed to improve the ability of these systems to adapt to various accident scenarios with respect to the type of collision and occupants involved, position of the occupants etc.
Another important area concerns inter-vehicle compatibility as well as compatibility between vehicles and vulnerable road users.
To support these three problem areas, IVSS has identified the following three functions / systems:
1. Sensor–rich embedded systems
• Sensor needs range from external objects/vision enhancement (other vehicles, people, animals, traffic signs, etc.)
to
internal vehicle systems (friction monitoring, vehicle stability, etc).
2. Communication platforms & digital road maps/infrastructure
• Define communication standards (e.g. “time critical traffic safety information”, communication range / frequency spectrum, connection methodology).
• Positioning and relative distance between vehicles.
• Digital infrastructure to support a cost–effective traffic management of basic services and the development of value–added services.
• Individual/personalised services to support industrial partners in making services available on the market that otherwise might not be
3. Dependable, fault–tolerant systems
• All systems can be depended upon to start quickly and run safely for a long time.
• Improved predictable error detection and failure tolerant architecture.
• Completely problem-free ownership experience.