Sensor Fusion as the Key in a Unified and Robust Commercial Vehicle Driver Assistance System 2012-01-2012

Recently, the development of various driver assistance systems into today's vehicle have increased due to the availability of affordable advanced electronics. With this increase in electronic content on today's commercial vehicles, various opportunities for sensor fusion are opened up, primarily because the sensors are typically part of the ECU cluster, and always measuring either driver input, vehicle states and potentially the environment around the vehicle. Given the larger variance in vehicle mass and length for commercial vehicles, as opposed to passenger cars, sensor data integrity and robustness is important to assure that all the sensors are reporting the same information, so that safety-critical Driver Assistance Systems can intervene effectively and robustly. An example of a fusion system will be discussed, consisting of a forward looking camera sensor paired with a forward looking radar and other vehicle sensors to provide improvement in both the acquisition of the kinematic properties of the forward vehicle and the estimation of the host vehicle state, as well as improved vehicle control.