Christian Ellersdorfer

UFO: Ultraflat Overrunable Robot for Experimental ADAS Testing

This industrial project introduces an ultraflat automated robot that can be used for testing driver assistance systems as well as automated driving scenarios. Because of its very stable and flat structure, it can be overrun by test vehicles without any damage. Therefore, it is possible to use this robot for both pre- and postcrash testing scenarios as well as for the evaluation of active safety systems (e.g., automatic brake) and autonomous driving.

Safety Measures for Avoiding or Mitigating the Occupant Exposure in Collisions with Large Animals

Road accidents involving large animals are responsible for a considerable number of fatalities; these are e.g. elk in Northern Europe or camels in Middle East, Horn of Africa and Maghreb. In order to address this topic, investigations concerning active and passive road safety have been launched at the King Saud University and at Graz University of Technology. Data of real accidents or accident statistics are not available in the required quality to gather typical accident scenarios. Therefore generic accidents types were derived and critical load cases were determined by means of multi body and finite element simulations. It was found that the vehicle acceleration due to the impact is not a safety issue, but the finite element simulations showed that massive local intrusions into the passenger compartment are the main cause for severe occupant injuries. Therefore, concepts for the prevention of critical intrusions were examined. In a first step the space required for the occupant movement due to the rather mediocre acceleration levels in car-to-large animal accidents was determined by multi-body simulation. In a second step different approaches preventing intrusions into the occupant-movement-space were analyzed by finite element simulation. In addition, the possible effects and requirements of active systems have been studied to demonstrate the potential of combined measures.