Driver assistance functions are today available in several new vehicle models with clear positive impacts on road safety. But they are covering only specific maneuvers, like for example to keep the vehicle in the lane. To increase such benefits these functions have to cover all possible dangerous scenarios, offering to the driver a “Continuous Support”: an integrated driver assistance system able to support the driver in several different driving situations in a continuous and homogenous way, so that the driver can perceive the driving support functions as a whole.
This full support will have great benefit from a “complete” perception of the traffic surrounding the vehicle. Moreover, the perception of the scenario could be not limited only to the field of view of each on board sensor (e.g. radar or camera), but extended thanks to the information available from other vehicles and from the infrastructure: the cooperative systems.
These innovative concepts of “continuous driver support”, based of advanced sensing and “cooperative systems” have been developed in several different European R&D Projects, two of the most important are “interactIVe” and “SAFESPOT”, both co-funded by the European Commission. The paper shows the main results developed, up-to-now, inside the two projects.
