Future Testing of Active Safety Systems

Active safety systems are increasingly becoming available in trucks and passenger vehicles. Developments in the field of active safety are shifting from increasing driver comfort towards increasing occupant safety. Furthermore, this shift is seen within active safety systems: safety functions are added to existing comfort systems, rather than adding new safety systems to the vehicle. Comfort systems such as cruise control are extended via ACC to pre-crash braking systems. Testing of active safety systems must follow these developments. Whereas standardized test programs are available for passive safety systems, such test programs are hardly available yet for active safety systems. Furthermore, test programs for passive safety systems consist of only a handful of scenarios. Test programs for active safety systems, however, should consist of much more scenarios, as those systems should function well in many different situations. It is not feasible to assess the intelligent vehicle safety (IVS) system's performance in all these scenarios by means of test-track testing. To speed up the introduction of active safety systems, there is a need for an efficient standardized test program, including alternatives to test track testing. This paper describes the vision of TNO Automotive on the developments that are expected in the field of development and evaluation of active safety systems and it explains the need for an efficient and complete test program for IVS systems, consisting of simulations, hardware-in-the-loop simulations and test track testing.