PANIC BRAKING DETECTION OF VEHICLE BY ENGINE RPM GRADIENT: A SENSOR LESS SAFETY APPLICATION

摘要

Passenger's Safety is most important parameters in design of modern automobiles and safety norms are becoming stricter day by day. A significant amount is contributed by safety related sensors and electronics towards total cost of a vehicle. On one hand research is ongoing by deploying more and more sensors to increase safety thus increasing cost of vehicle; while on the other hand senor less approaches can make the car affordable in countries which are very cost sensitive. Motivation of the paper is to evaluate a sensor less strategy to detect panic braking condition in a vehicle and triggering some other safety related systems and additionally alert the nearby or following vehicles by means of visual signals such as flashing hazard light. The panic braking detection can serve as secondary authentication for air bag and primary signal for controlling hazard light or seat belt pre tension. For example Brake assist systems, detect panic braking to support driver to attain improved stopping distance by measuring the force applied on brake pedal or antilock brake system measure vehicle angular velocity to detect slip to activate ABS controller, but all these systems rely on external sensors in contrast to the method proposed and evaluated in this paper. Fall in engine RPM(rotation per minute) and rate of fall in RPM can be associated with sudden braking and analysis of these two parameters together can serve as a sensor less method to detect panic braking condition.