A radar technology, developed by Cambridge Consultants, coupled with a vision processing system could enable cars to “sense” the presence of pedestrians and start automobile safety systems in advance of a collision.

Once initiated by the CCL-Softcar forward-looking radar, the vision system captures images and then performs an object classification operation on them. The system then uses radar scatter information, object movement information, shape and colour matching to distinguish humans from other moving objects.

Because of the 20 to 25 metre range of the radar and the speed of the digital signal processor used to process the images, there is time to initiate safety measures if an accident is predicted. Among the impact mitigation measures under discussion are tilting the bonnet to lessen the severity of impact, firing external airbags, and assisting braking.

Via The Engineer. Press release.