Study of Automatic Emergency Braking Effects on Human and Surrogate Passengers

The influence of modern Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) on the head and neck behavior of the occupants in a vehicle continues to be an active area of research. Occupant kinematics and kinetics were evaluated using a vehicle equipped with a pedestrian AEB system. The vehicle was tested in several different scenarios with speeds between 15 and 45 mph. Two instrumented 50^th-percentile male Hybrid-III Anthropomorphic Test Devices (ATD) were positioned in certain seats of the vehicle, while minimally instrumented human volunteers occupied the remaining seats. Displacement transducers and video analysis were utilized to capture the kinematics of each occupant. The findings of this study indicate that in AEB-only events with belted-occupants, the test vehicle did not result in any occupant motion that would have placed the occupants out-of-position (OOP) had an impact occurred immediately following the AEB event. This means that when evaluating real-world AEB events, it may not be necessary to analyze and model properly seated and restrained occupant kinematics prior to an impact event when only AEB occurs. Consistent with the published literature, the kinetic results continue to show that the belted occupant exposure is significantly below any accepted injury criteria and is comparable to routine activities of daily living. Tests were also completed in two seating configurations with unbelted ATDs to evaluate the difference in vehicle braking (if any) and the excursion differences when unbelted. The study found greater excursion for unbelted ATDs compared to that of belted volunteers and provides a sample of unbelted ATD kinematics via AEB activation.