Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS): Assessing the Efficacy of Non-Impact Testing for Evaluating the Performance of Frontal Collision Mitigation Technology

As Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) systems become standard equipment in more light duty vehicles, the ability to evaluate these systems efficiently is becoming critical to regulatory agencies and manufacturers. A key driver of the practicality of evaluating these systems’ performance is the potential collision between the subject vehicle and test target. AEB performance can depend on vehicle-to-vehicle closing speeds, crash scenarios, and nuanced differences between various situational and environmental factors. Consequently, high speed impacts that may occur while evaluating the performance of an AEB system, as a result of partial or incomplete mitigation by an AEB activation, can cause significant damage to both the test vehicle and equipment, which may be impractical. For tests in which impact with the test target is not acceptable, or as a means of increasing test count, an alternative test termination methodology may be used. One such method constitutes the application of a late steering maneuver by the driver to avoid the target prior to a potential collision. In this study, a test series was performed with and without late steering input to determine if this alternative AEB evaluation methodology can be used to accurately predict the degree to which an AEB system performs. The results were compared to non-swerve tests to assess whether non-impact testing can be used to determine the extent to which AEB system response would have mitigated a collision. The findings indicate that there are significant limitations to the accuracy of predictions made with this approach.