91 Fahrzeugkonstruktion
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PROSPECT (Proactive Safety for Pedestrians and Cyclists) is a collaborative research project involving most of the relevant partners from the automotive industry (including important active safety vehicle manufacturers and tier-1 suppliers) as well as academia and independent test labs, funded by the European Commission in the Horizon 2020 research program. PROSPECT's primary goal is the development of novel active safety functions, to be finally demonstrated to the public in three prototype vehicles. A sound benefit assessment of the prototype vehicle's functionality requires a broad testing methodology which goes beyond what has currently been used. Since PROSPECT functions are developed to prevent accidents in intersections, a key aspect of the test methodology is the reproduction of natural driving styles on the test track with driving robots. For this task, data from a real driving study with subjects in a suburb of Munich, Germany was used. Further data from Barcelona will be available soon. The data suggests that intersection crossing can be broken down into five phases, two phases with straight deceleration / acceleration, one phase with constant radius and speed turning, and two phases where the bend is imitated or ended. In these latter phases, drivers mostly combine lateral and longitudinal accelerations and drive what is called a clothoid, a curve with curvature proportional to distance travelled, in order to change lateral acceleration smoothly rather than abrupt. The data suggests that the main parameter of the clothoid, the ratio distance travelled to curvature, is mostly constant during the intersections. This parameter together with decelerations and speeds allows the generation of synthetic robot program files for a reproduction of natural driving styles using robots, allowing a much greater reproducibility than what is possible with human test drivers. First tests show that in principle it is possible to use the driving robots for vehicle control in that manner; a challenge currently is the control performance of the robot system in terms of speed control, but it is anticipated that this problem will be solved soon. Further elements of the PROSPECT test methodology are a standard intersection marking to be implemented on the test track which allows the efficient testing of all PROSPECT test cases, standard mobile and light obstruction elements for quick reproduction of obstructions of view, and a concept for tests in realistic surroundings. First tests using the PROSPECT test methodology will be conducted over the summer 2017, and final tests of the prototype vehicles developed within PROSPECT will be conducted in early 2018
Recent accident statistics from the German national database state bicyclists being the second endangered group of vulnerable road users besides pedestrians. With 399 fatalities, more than 14.000 seriously injured and more than 61.000 slightly injured persons on german roads in the year 2011, the group of bicyclists is ranked second of all road user groups (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2012). While the overall bicycle helmet usage frequency in Germany is very low, evidence is given that its usage leads to a significant reduction of severe head injuries. After an estimation of the benefit of bicycle helmet usage as well as an appropriate test procedure for bicyclists, this paper describes two different approaches for the improvement of bicyclist safety. While the first one is focusing on the assessment of the vehicle based protection potential for bicyclists, the second one is concentrating on the safety assessment of bicycle helmets. Within the first part of the study the possible revision of the existing pedestrian testing protocols is being examined, using in depth accident data, full scale simulation and hardware testing. Within the second part of the study, the results of tests according to supplemental test procedures for the safety assessment of bicycle helmets developed by the German Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) are presented. An additional full scale test performed at reduced impact speed proves that measures of active vehicle safety as e.g. braking before the collision event do not necessarily always lead to a reduction of injury severity.