Improving the effectiveness of active safety systems to significantly reduce accidents with vulnerable road users - the project PROSPECT (Proactive Safety for Pedestrians and Cyclists)

Paper in proceeding, 2019

Accidents involving Vulnerable Road Users (VRU) are still a very significant issue for road safety. ́PROactive Safety for PEdestrians and CyclisTs ́ is a collaborative research project funded by the European Commission. The objective of PROSPECT was to improve significantly the effectiveness of active VRU safety systems compared to those currently on the market by: (i) expanding the scope of urban scenarios addressed (ii) improving the overall Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) and Autonomous Emergency Steering (AES) system performance (iii) proposing extensive validation methodologies for consumer testing, simulation and acceptance studies with tools for testing. Concepts for sensors and control systems were shown in three vehicle demonstrators and a mobile driving simulator and tested with novel VRU dummy specimen. Those systems address the well-known barriers of current AEB systems such as limited sensors field-of-view, fuzzy path prediction, unreliable intent recognition and slow reaction times for the actuation. User acceptance tests with the participation of drivers were also crucial in PROSPECT for the success of all active safety systems. Driving simulator studies were then used in a controlled and repeatable environment for the collection of data regarding the interaction between the driver and the safety function. Finally, project consortium implemented a novel benefit estimation methodology that includes an assessment of the combined effect of active and passive safety measures of PROSPECT-like systems.