CHAMELEON is a European project, covering a safety area which is an extension of the conventional passive safety systems (safety belt, pre-tensioned belt, air bag). The scope of CHAMELEON is to study and develop innovative applications which have the objective to minimise the effect on the on board passengers of a collision, improving the efficacy of the existing conventional devices. Further effort will be devoted to outline the requirements of equipment, evolution of the existing ones. In fact a real improvement in safety is related to the integration of the long range obstacle detection, the short detectors and the deployment of passive safety systems. The knowledge of the dynamic characteristics of potential obstacles, their evolution before the accident occurs, the detailed knowledge of the vehicle and of the occupants characteristics can provide valuable means to both avoid the accident and/or to mitigate the effects of collisions allowing optimised strategies for deployment of safety belt pre-tensioners, air bags or other driver and passengers protection systems. Interactively the availability of such preventive and active safety systems can influence the design of the car body and of the vehicle interior design and materials. In this paper, the complete presentation of CHAMELEON project is done, in terms of benefits at social and individual level, emphasising the multi-functional approach, including the relevant synergies - which are under investigation - between preventive and passive safety concept, and finally pointing out a global overview of the main aspects, both technical and managerial, of CHAMELEON.
Samenvatting