Overview
The wish and determination to achieve considerably fewer accidents have been pronounced by a number of European stakeholders, for instance the EU programme Halving the number of road accident victims in the European Union by 2010 . This ambitious safety goal will not be met as scheduled. A number of reasons for that can be brought up.
One main reason is the slow market introduction of Intelligent Vehicle Safety Systems (IVSS) and the high cost of safety applications. Currently IVSS are limited to a small part of the premium car segment. Future safety systems must be made affordable to penetrate all vehicle segments. Since small and medium size cars are dominating the road traffic and thus most of the accidents.
The consortium stresses here that a boost of the market penetration of driver support systems can be realised by generic sensors that are affordable, durable and of compact size to be used in different locations in vehicles or in the infrastructure, providing fully reliable sensor data. All these requirements have not yet met by present day sensors.
Objectives
The main objective of the project was to develop and demonstrate a prototype of a low-cost miniature automotive Laserscanner for environment perception. More specifically, the consortium set out to develop totally new low-cost miniature Laserscanner technology that opens up the Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) market for small and medium size cars and broadens the range of possible applications by its low cost, low power, small size and robustness.
Furthermore, the novel Laserscanner to be developed will be a generic sensor also in the sense that it will have application areas outside road vehicles ranging from infrastructure applications, moving work machines to mobile robots.
Expected impacts
- World leadership of Europe's industry in the area of Intelligent Vehicle Systems and expansion to new emerging markets, improving the competitiveness of the whole transport sector and the automotive industry.
- Significant improvements in safety, security and comfort of transport. This includes contribution towards the objective of reducing fatalities with 50% in the EU by 2010, and longer term work towards the 'zero-fatalities' scenario.
- Significant improvements in energy efficiency, emissions reduction and sustainability of transport. This includes contribution to reduction in the energy consumption and congestion in road transport.
The consortium demonstrated and evaluated:
- the novel Laserscanner serving various applications in vehicle environment, both on a truck and passenger car
- the generic nature of the novel Laserscanner as a sensor that has use outside the vehicle by providing infrastructure based road user information at an intersection to the vehicle via V2I-communication
The MiniFaros consortium developed totally new low-cost miniature Laserscanner technology that opens up the Advanced Driver Assistance System market for small and medium size cars and broadens the range of possible applications by its:
- low cost
- small size (4 cm x 4 cm x 4 cm)
- high performance, like field of view of up to 300 degrees
Funding
Results
MiniFaros has developed an innovative Laser scanner in terms of its new solutions for optical and electronics design including a MicroElectroMechanical Systems mirror, which is able to serve a wide range of advanced automotive safety applications.
Strategy targets
- An efficient and integrated mobilty system:
- Secure Transport
- Service quality and reliabilty
- Innovating for the future: technology and behaviour