Stella Nikolaou

SAFERIDER Project: New safety and comfort in Powered Two Wheelers

In the last ten years, European Commission has deeply investigated the concern of Powered Two Wheelers (PTW) accidents in the European roads, trying to focus on the improvement of road safety through the introduction of Intelligence Transportation Systems. Several new European research projects involving PTWs have been promoted by EC to resolve this gap: SAFERIDER aiming to enhance rider safety, comfort and, hopefully, reduce fatalities. Four Advanced Riding Assistance Systems (ARAS, or so called in literature ADAS, with Driver instead of Rider) and four In-Vehicle Information Systems (IVIS) will be designed, studied and validated to create a new vehicle concept , with high technical and innovation values. To reach this goal, a priori in-depth accident analyses are performed to discover causes and most common scenarios leading to accidents. Following this, the development of a common architecture able to host ARAS and IVIS is on progress and will be finalized in the next months. To close the loop between vehicle and rider, Human Machine Interface (HMI) concepts are designed and implemented in different ways [1]. A major innovation and breakthrough of the SAFERIDER project, lies with the fact being the first project that considers the integration of several sub-systems on PTWs.

New HMI Concept for Motorcycles---The Saferider Approach

For more than one decade the European Commission has been focusing on the enhancement of road safety by funding research on Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Intelligent Vehicle Information Systems (IVIS) in the field of automotive. However, the application of such technologies in Powered-Two-Wheelers (PTW) is currently lacking behind. While in the automotive sector extended knowledge has been generated also on the Human-Machine Interface (HMI) for ADAS and IVIS this does by far not apply for the PTW sector. This paper presents the SAFERIDER (Advanced telematics for enhancing the safety and comfort of motorcycle riders) project outline and focuses on the new HMI concept and haptic interface devices that are developed within the project.

Assistance and Mitigation Strategies in Case of Impaired Motorcycle Riders: The ADAS&ME Case Study

Riding a motorcycle requires both physical and mental effort. These requirements are amplified by factors like long riding hours, high or low temperatures, high relative humidity levels or rain. Besides exposing the rider to the external environment, the vehicle cannot offer full aerodynamic protection and limits him/her in a fixed position, which is less comfortable than that of a car. Furthermore, physical effort is required to steer and actively balance the motorcycle. Such factors may induce impairing states like physical fatigue, distraction and stress. The work carried out within the ADAS&ME project has the aim to create a system able to detect, and possibly in extreme conditions prevent, these states, and then to provide adequate assistance to the rider during long touring travels and, if the situation becomes safety critical, actively enable intervention functions with embedded ad-hoc safety strategy.