Development Underway in FIAT for Onboard Information and Collision Avoidance Systems

Awareness of possible forthcoming bad weather conditions (fog, snow or heavy rain) as well as traffic potentially dangerous situations (car accidents or traffic jam) can be vital to the driver specially in today heavy traffic congested environment. A short/medium range realy warning, system improving efficiency and safety of driving is described. The system we call Hand Shake consists in an intervehicular short range radio link which automatically creates an interchange of information among the vehicles.

A vision enhancement systems is as well described. It consists of a remote pulse intensified camera associated to a pulse lighting method of the scenery.

The first one reduce the damping effect in the light propagation though fog and the second one reduce the backscattering effect due to fog.

Both system which can usefully complement radar systems are under evaluation on FIAT and show promising results. The project are carried out as part of the partecipation of Fiat to the Prometheus program.