PRE-CRASH SENSOR FOR PRE-CRASH SAFETY

Improvement of vehicle safety performance is one of the targets of ITS development. A pre-crash safety system has been developed that utilizes ITS technologies. The Pre-crash Safety system reduces collision injury by estimating TTC (time-to-collision) to pre-emptively activate safety devices, which consist of Pre-crash Seatbelt system and Pre-crash Brake Assist system. The key technology of these systems is a Pre-crash Sensor to detect obstacles and estimate TTC. The Pre-crash Sensor uses millimeter-wave radar to detect preceding vehicles, oncoming vehicles, roadside objects, etc. on the road ahead. Furthermore, by using a phased array system as a vehicle radar for the first time, a compact electronically scanned millimeter-wave radar with high recognition performance has been achieved. With respect to the obstacle determination algorithm, a crash determination algorithm has been newly developed, taking into account estimation of the direction of advance of the vehicle, in addition to the distance, relative speed and direction of the object. For the covering abstract see ITRD E825082.