Developing Automotive Active Safety Technologies

1. Introduction

Over the past 100 years since the birth and development of automobiles, automobile safety has been widely valued and concerned by automobile manufacturers, automobile consumers and governments of various countries. In countries with developed automobile industries, huge human, financial and material resources have been continuously invested in the research field of automobile safety, and a large number of relevant automobile safety standards have been formulated, such as international standards (ISO), European Community standards (ECE), United Nations Economic Commission for Europe standards (EEC) and various national standards (among which the US Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard FMVSS and Japan's automobile safety standards are quite influential).

Although safety standards vary greatly around the world, due to the international nature of the automotive industry, major automotive countries have been coordinating and integrating automotive safety standards and regulations through bilateral and multilateral cooperation, making national boundaries in this field increasingly blurred. After decades of development, especially since the 1990s, the new concept of future automotive safety has been roughly formed.

We can see from real life that although passive safety technology can effectively reduce accident disasters, active safety technology is more important. It can avoid damage to people and vehicles, especially the considerable indirect economic losses caused by traffic jams afterwards, which can be said to be preventing problems before they happen.

2. Development motivation

With the growth of car ownership, road traffic accidents have become a global social problem. It is estimated that more than 500,000 people die in road traffic accidents every year and 10 million people are injured. my country is the country with the most serious traffic accidents in the world. The grim reality forces people to face up to the issue of car safety. From the perspective of marketing, improving car safety means increasing the market share of corporate products; from the perspective of consumer interests, improving car safety means strengthening the protection of human life and property; from the perspective of government management, improving car safety is an important measure to stabilize society and ensure economic prosperity.

Since the 1990s, both car consumers and government managers have had higher and higher expectations for the safety of future cars. With the progress of society and the improvement of people's living standards, this mentality of car consumers and government managers is reasonable and inevitable. This trend was soon reflected in the automobile safety regulations of various countries. After continuous revision and addition, automobile safety regulations have become more and more stringent and perfect. First, the FMVSS regulations formulated and supervised by the Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the United States reduced the number of accident deaths by 20%. Subsequently, the European Community, Japan, Australia, Canada and other countries also announced their own regulations accordingly. Most of them were modified and supplemented with reference to FMVSS and ECE, and the mandatory nature became increasingly strict. Following the formulation of GB/T11551-89 "Motor Vehicle Occupant Collision Protection", GB/11557-89 "Regulations on Preventing Driver Injury by Motor Vehicle Steering Mechanism" and GB/11553-89 "Regulations on Fuel Leakage in the Event of Frontal Collision of Motor Vehicles" in 1989, China's automobile collision safety regulations system is about to emerge. The regulations of government management departments have forced automobile companies to make a quick and strong response to automobile safety.

On the other hand, the automobile industry has become the most typical group-based and globalized industry in the world today. Against the backdrop of global economic integration and the beginning of the knowledge economy, especially after the Asian financial crisis, major automobile companies around the world are striving to improve product performance, occupy the technological commanding heights, adapt to the diversified needs of internationalization, and actively explore and occupy the international market. Automobile safety has naturally become an important part of the development strategy of the industrial pillar industries of various countries.

Traditional technologies and measures for protecting occupants after a collision are far from meeting the requirements of modern transportation for automobile safety. It has become an urgent requirement of modern transportation to develop traditional automobile passive safety technology centered on collision safety into modern automobile active safety technology centered on prevention. The new round of automobile technology revolution characterized by the application of advanced electronics, communications and information technology in automobiles has provided the possibility for this.

3. Technical composition

The causes of automobile traffic accidents are very complex, including technical factors of the vehicle itself, behavioral factors of people involved in traffic, and environmental factors such as roads and weather. In short, people-vehicle-environment are the three major factors that affect the safety performance of automobile driving, and these three constitute a system engineering that restricts each other. For example, when driving a car, the driver must complete a closed-loop process of perception-judgment-operation of the environment and the car, and must go through a cycle of repeated cycles during driving to complete the operation and control of the car. For the driver, he must have the corresponding skills to successfully complete the safe driving work; for the vehicle, it is necessary to provide the driver with an external technical condition that can adapt to the physiological and psychological characteristics of people to ensure that the driver can complete the above cycle well. This is the connotation of active safety of the car. Under the current circumstances, in order to improve the active safety of the car and prevent accidents before they happen, it is mainly achieved through the following technologies.

3.1 Visual recognition characteristics

The accuracy of the information about roads, vehicles, etc. that the driver feels while driving will directly affect the active safety of the car. Good visual recognition characteristics are an important part of the active safety of the car. When the car is driving, about 95% of the external environment information is collected through human observation. Visual recognition characteristics include: field of view performance, visibility, anti-glare, etc. Among them, visual recognition performance includes the front field of view (direct field of view), the rear field of view (indirect field of view) and the field of view performance in special environments (including field of view in cold, rainy days and at night); visibility is achieved through vehicle width indicators, emergency flashes, alarms, reflections and other signal devices. In terms of anti-glare, some technologies such as three-beam headlights have been introduced.

3.2 Vehicle chassis electronic integrated control device

This device is a very eye-catching project in the automotive active safety technology, and it is also an important aspect for major automobile companies to demonstrate their technical strength and occupy the advantageous commanding heights of automotive technology. Therefore, the developing automotive active safety technology is concentrated here. The process of the driver driving is the process of information exchange between people, cars and the environment, forming a closed-loop system of human-vehicle-environment information flow. The improvement of vehicle performance depends on the mutual coordination and the best matching of their respective characteristics in the closed-loop system, that is, to achieve the optimal coordination between the driver's behavioral characteristics, vehicle mechanical characteristics, and road facilities and traffic regulations in the system, so as to pursue the best benefits of the system as a whole. The research trend and results of this advanced automotive active safety technology reflect the system engineering viewpoint of human-machine integration (AHMS).

3.3 Information transmission technology

When the driver is manipulating and controlling the car, he must constantly obtain the information he needs from all aspects. After the information collected by the information transmission system from people, vehicles and the environment is processed by the processor, in addition to serving the vehicle chassis electronic integrated control device, it can also output more useful deep-processing information for the driver, even including the driver's attention status, and display it in data or images to help the driver obtain more complete information and deal with various situations in a timely manner.

Information transmission technology has developed under the background of the world's automotive mechatronics. It is a new technology with computer and communication technology as its core. It closely revolves around market needs and focuses on future automotive safety. It will open up a new path for the development of the automotive market in the next century. Even in its current early stages, this technology has considerable returns. The Traffic Dynamics Group of the National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) of the United States believes that the full implementation of ABS alone will reduce 29,000 tractor/trailer collision accidents each year, save 320-500 lives and reduce 27,000 injured people. The analysis report of 182 traffic accidents by the Hanover Traffic Accident Research Group in Germany shows that the anti-lock braking system can avoid 7.1% of traffic accidents, 13.9% of material losses and 17.4% of personal injuries. It can be predicted that if the various independent active safety devices and measures are integrated and optimized, the active safety of automobiles will make a qualitative leap.

In fact, since the 1990s, especially in recent years, the active safety technology of automobiles has been advancing in this direction. For example, after the anti-lock braking system ABS (Acceleration Braking System) and the drive anti-skid system ASR (Acceleration Skid Response) became conventional technologies for active safety of automobiles, the vehicle stability control unit VSC (Vehicle Stability Control), an active safety device for automobiles that integrates ABS and ASR at a higher level, has come into being. The VSC system has greatly improved the active safety performance of automobiles. It has changed the method of installing snow tires and anti-skid chains when driving in winter, and can cope with turns or icy and slippery road conditions that are much more complex than straight-line driving dynamics. Other control systems that have been used or are about to be applied will also be integrated and exert comprehensive effectiveness. Some people predict that future cars will become carriers of various cutting-edge electronic technologies or that cars in the 21st century are mobile computer platforms. Intelligent braking, intelligent acceleration, intelligent deceleration, and intelligent steering are the basic characteristics of future smart cars.

The intelligent active safety technology of automobile human-machine integration fully examines various aspects and multiple factors, so as to achieve common judgment, joint decision-making and coordination between people and cars, and realize the cooperative "partner" relationship of complementarity between people and machines. This technology itself is the product of multidisciplinary integration, including technical fields such as machinery, computers, information, physiology, psychology and social sciences, as well as modern high-tech technologies of human-machine coupling and interface. For example, the purpose of conducting research on traffic psychology and human psychological characteristics is to make the handling performance of future cars adapt to human physiological characteristics, thereby reducing traffic accidents caused by ergonomics, and laying a theoretical foundation for the design of intelligent car handling performance and ergonomics. The preliminary work of automobile intelligence is to use the car's driving assistance system to make up for the shortcomings of people in perception, judgment and manipulation. Once this technology matures in the future, it can further promote the intelligentization of automobile active safety.

4. Conclusion

Automobile safety is not only a technical issue, but also an important social issue to some extent. The active safety of automobiles has a broad development prospect because it is positioned to prevent accidents before they happen. It is increasingly valued by automobile manufacturers, government management departments and consumers. The application of electronic technology to make vehicles highly intelligent is the main factor that has led to a qualitative leap in automobile active safety technology worldwide. Although the Experimental Safety Vehicle (ESV) proposed by the United States in the 1970s and the Advanced Safety Vehicle (ASV) proposed by Japan in the 1990s are representative works of improving automobile safety in two different historical periods, they are both prototypes of future safe cars.

Countries with developed automobile industries such as Europe, the United States, and Japan have carried out major topics in the automobile industry, including automobile active safety technology, in a highly planned and orderly manner, and have formulated short-term, medium-term, and long-term plans. Under the guidance of national laws and policies, through the combination of production, learning, and research, considerable efforts have been invested to gradually implement them, and substantial progress has been made. In my country, with the rapid development of the national economy, the increase in traffic, and the large population, traffic problems will become more prominent. In this regard, although my country has taken many corresponding measures, it has not done enough to strengthen the safety performance of automobiles. This is not only not conducive to my country's traffic safety situation, but also with the practical application and commercialization of advanced safety technologies in developed automobile industries such as Europe, the United States, and Japan, the newly emerging Chinese national automobile industry will be greatly impacted. Especially today, when the automobile industry is competing with many competitors, the Chinese automobile industry, which is about to face the opportunities and challenges brought about by joining the WTO, must make a strong response to this. In line with the development direction of automobile active safety technology, it is imperative to develop modern automobile active safety technology in my country in a planned and step-by-step manner.