Active safety technology is very important in order to decrease both the number of, and the damage in, fatal traffic accidents. Although many attempts to develop active safety technology have been made, the number of fatal accidents in Japan continues to occur at quite a substantial rate. This paper proposes the direction of active safety technology evolution with the help and assistance of vehicle intelligence. Active safety technology is grasped as the means of drive assist system. Then, active drive assist technology is categorized to three levels of drive assist: muscle activity level, motion nerve level, and finally perception and judgement level. Within each of these categories, the problems encountered during the realization of each of the drive assist systems are discussed. Finally, a direction for intelligent vehicle technology is proposed.
Abstract