Partner News: TNO drives you forward: with or without an in-vehicle system

Date: 03 October 2008

Advanced driver assistance systems are intended to facilitate the task of driving. Applications such as collision warning, blind spot alert or intelligent speed adaptation are increasingly available in new cars. It is assumed that they have a positive influence upon traffic safety, traffic flow and the environment. Research has been done to verify this assumption, but has remained on a small scale to date. Very few large-scale field tests have been undertaken in Europe. Consequently, in the Seventh Framework Programme, the European Commission has made resources available for testing cars and trucks with in-vehicle systems. These trials are needed to assess the real impacts of such driver aids.

The key role of TNO
The EC Field-Operational Test (FOT) research programme consists of a number of phases. The first phase concerned the project FESTA, “Field Operational Test Support Action” that produced a methodology for undertaking large-scale field tests. ERTICO Partner TNO examined the socio-economic consequences and selected the test subjects and the aims of the test itself. FESTA ran from November 2007 to May 2008 and resulted in guidelines for instituting large-scale field tests. In the EuroFOT project, funded through the European Commission’s 7th Framework Programme on Information Society, a number of large-scale field tests for in-vehicle systems in real traffic conditions will be performed. The project commenced in May 2008 and will run for three years.

The partners: combining knowledge
In EuroFOT TNO works together with universities, car manufacturers, insurance companies and many other organisations – a total of 28 participants. Lead contractor for EuroFOT is Ford Forschungszentrum Aachen, and the project budget is 20 million Euro. Various systems will be investigated in different cars and trucks, these include ‘Speed Limiter’ (SL), ‘Blind Spot Information System’ (BLIS), ‘Lane Departure Warning’ (LDW) and ‘Impairment Warning’ (IW) systems. The vehicles will be equipped with a data-logger that records how the driver performs using the various systems. Upon conclusion of the project, we hope to have gained a clearer picture of the impact of in-vehicle systems. The Dutch government is also interested in the results, and is keen to undertake similar tests together with TNO in the future.