Status of Test Methods for Active Safety Systems 2012-36-0214

Novel active safety functions are introduced in road vehicles and nowadays cars, trucks and buses start to be equipped with functions to avoid collisions. The performance of these active safety functions must be possible to test and assess. There are several initiatives addressing how to test active safety. These functions are under rapid development and there is presently, and in contrast to passive safety, no generally accepted assessment programme in place. Several initiatives have identified this need for standardised testing and assessment methods over the past years.

This paper gives an overview and comparison of initiatives worldwide which lately have been or are currently dealing with the topic of active safety performance testing. Among others, performance in vehicle-to-vehicle or vehicle-to-pedestrian accident scenarios is being addressed by international initiatives: the eVALUE, ASSESS and AsPeCSS projects, the vFSS working group, the CAMP-CIB initiative and the AEB group. These initiatives propose test procedures for Collision Warning and Autonomous Emergency Braking and Pedestrian Detection and Protection systems. Additionally, stability related accident scenarios are under the scope, after the deployment of the American and European regulations for ESC systems.

This paper will present the outcome of several workshops held in the frame of active safety. The workshop on Collision Warning and Autonomous Emergency Braking systems, at IKA (Germany) in September 2011, will provide global input in the fields of test procedures, test tools and test targets for pre-crash systems. The workshop on Handling and stability assessment procedures, at IDIADA (Spain) in February 2012, has analyzed the feasibility of assessing the stability and handling performance of different vehicles, with standardized test scenarios, as well as the new possibilities for using simulation tools in the validation process of chassis control systems. A third workshop, to be held at SP (Sweden) in September 2012 will deal with pedestrian detection systems. For all workshops, most important results will include summaries of the test procedures presented by the different initiatives, the identification of test scenarios and performance indicators, the main discussion points identified during the workshops and the identification of next steps for further research.

This paper is given under the umbrella of the ActiveTest initiative. It is a neutral initiative with the objective of disseminating current research dedicated to the evaluation of performance of active safety systems. The content of this paper reflects the status and/or results of the different initiatives participating in the workshops.

The support action ActiveTest within the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Commission has the objective to bring together all relevant initiatives in this field. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no. 269904.