Toward next active safety technology of intelligent vehicle

Autonomous driving has attracted attention in recent years from the viewpoint of energy consumption and traffic accident prevention; hence, its introduction has been desired. In Japan, various accident prevention safety technologies were developed for cooperative control between the driver and the vehicle system. For example, “adaptive cruise control system” and “lane departure warning system” were developed in the 1990s and “lane keeping assist system” and “braking control device for reducing collision damage” in the early stages of the 2000s. Later in Europe, autonomous driving systems were actively studied, and an automated braking system to avoid collisions was introduced in the market in the second half of the 2000s. Studies and development have been promoted for the practical use of active safety technologies based on autonomous driving technologies. Autonomous driving technologies could be applied to various cases, such as convoy travelling to compensate for the insufficient number of professional drivers or to improve their work environment, last-one-mile travelling from a public transportation station to home for the elderly, people who have children and people who need assistance, dead-man system for sudden illness of the driver, and automated parking for assisting the driver who is not good at it, or for the parking space to be effectively used. In this paper, an overview of the transition and history of vehicular technologies for safety and reliability is given. In particular, active safety technologies for traffic accident prevention and the necessary related technology trend are reviewed, and future problems are pointed out.