The recent Business Plan of the Intelligent Vehicle Initiative (IVI), by the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), contains several candidate services that address collision warning and collision avoidance systems. Although this business plan addresses crash survivability through automatic collision notification, smart restraints, and smart occupant protection systems, it does not fully address the mitigation of crash severity. A proactive exterior airbag framework to enhance the crash avoidance and survivability components of the IVI is proposed. When a crash is unavoidable the proactive exterior airbag system would form an air cushion between the vehicle and the colliding objects so as to absorb crash energy and reduce crash severity substantially. The proactive exterior airbag system comprises 3 major components: (1) detection subsystem, (2) control and deployment subsystem, and (3) exterior airbag subsystem. (A*)
Samenvatting