Researchers Designed Street-based Radar System to save pedestrian lives

Jul, 2021 - By WMR

A new setup was performed in Street-based Radar System by installing certain radar sensors to notify the drivers about people walking or crossing along the streets to prevent accidents.

Pedestrian-detecting radar system is a new technology equipped by many cars in today’s scenario to detect pedestrians and save their life with careful driving near them. A new setup of street-based radar system is intended by taking radar to street because of certain limitations faced previously developed radar system. It was tough to detect pedestrians as it has a blockage in the system due to buildings or other vehicles. Researchers from Fraunhofer Research Group of Germany worked on development of the system as part of a project named as HORIS project. They planned the installation of MIMO radar sensors connected to infrastructures at the pedestrian-heavy locations such as crosswalks, school zones or bus stops.

The installation of MIMO radar sensors would continuously scan the respective area at the rate of 100 times per second. Each sensor unit followed a particular process of identification of pedestrian and then move accordingly. Firstly, it detects an object as a person, and then verifies the direction and speed of the respective person where they are moving. The system perceives the person heading toward the road at a particular speed and emits a warning signal if the person moves towards road at a higher speed than expected. Such a wireless signal would be seized by the system in nearby cars known as vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) system.

When a pedestrian proceeds towards road at a higher speed, the system declares an audio/visual alarm that would create alertness among nearby vehicles. This alarm would grab the attention of drivers and prevent them from hitting vehicles to the pedestrian. Eventually, the system mechanism could also activate the brakes of those cars automatically to prevent any mishap. Even though there is no risk over pedestrian on the streets, the system also gives the warning to drivers when they approach pedestrian-heavy locations to have precautions. Researchers claimed that, the system is still under process and could be applied soon in real-time.