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Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) runs with a set of parameters that determine how the ACC performs. Some of these parameters are tunable to some degree through HMI and the rest are pre-determined. The proposed Behavior Trainable ACC (BTACC) is able to learn all these parameters from driving behavior of the driver. To develop BTACC adapted to the driver’s driving behavior, the ACC keeps collecting driving data such as set speed, acceleration, deceleration, headway settings, etc., of the vehicle over time and keeps updating the related parameters. After training is over, the driver is able to drive the vehicle in BTACC mode, when the vehicle would drive itself according to driving behavior of the driver, young or elderly, and thus, provide the drivers with a higher level of safety and comfort. BTACC can be embedded with an existing ACC module so that the drivers may choose either ACC or BTACC.

Current crash sensing technology is mainly based on the measurement of acceleration, aside from the pressure sensing technology for side impact sensing introduced Siemens VDO in 1997. The airbag control unit mounted in the passenger compartment captures vehicle acceleration and calculates the crash detection algorithms. In most of today's systems, the discrimination algorithms are supported by acceleration or air pressure data measured at the crash zone of the vehicle. Conventional sensor setups have difficulties detecting specific crash situations (e.g. low speed wall versus high speed deformable barrier or angular situations) in a timely manner and with good robustness. The measurement of “Crash Impact Sound” in the vehicle structure improves the discrimination of today's sensing systems significantly. “Crash impact sound sensing” leads to higher discrimination robustness.

The absolute severity of a vehicular crash cannot be determined until the crash event is complete. However, airbag sensing systems are required to discriminate the severity of a crash event in the first milliseconds of an impact. Future airbag systems will require even more discrimination capability than current systems to provide separate deployment thresholds for advanced technologies such as multi-staged airbags and pre-tensioners and threshold shifting for belted and unbelted occupants. A prototype advanced sensing system has been tested to improve the severity measurement of an impact and offer multiple deployment thresholds without increasing the time required for event discrimination. Results of crash tests and the system's performance are discussed.