Development of a simulator to evaluate the effect of active safety support systems

At present, we are developing "A Survey Simulator to Evaluate Safety Systems (ASSESS)". This device generates a 3D computer simulation of a traffic environment, such as an actual intersection, within which vehicles (agents) run autonomously in a virtual traffic flow. In addition, this agent can be equipped with the functions of active safety system for evaluation. Accordingly, ASSESS can predict their effect on the reduction of traffic accidents from the change in the accident rate caused by changing the conditions of the agent, such as the rate of active safety system installation. In this study, the Brake Assist System (BAS) was selected for evaluation by ASSESS, and the crossing collision was chosen as the accident type. ASSESS consists of an environment model, driver model, vehicle model, and a control program that manages these models. Since actual traffic accidents are mainly caused by human error, the driver model was programmed to generate a human error at each stage of recognition, judgment, and operation. Furthermore, because this study concerns the BAS, a two-wheel-vehicle model was used as the vehicle model, which has a total of three degrees of freedom of movement in the fore-and-aft direction as well as freedom of rotation of the front and rear tires. The results of comparing the braking distance between an actual vehicle and the simulated agent confirmed that ASSESS is capable of accurately simulating the braking behavior.