THI and Continental in the Top 5 for Hermes Award 2018

THI and Continental have been researching innovations in vehicle safety together for 13 years. With the SAFE research project, future developers are pursuing the goal of anticipating collisions before they occur, thereby gaining valuable, often crucial (milli)seconds in which safety systems can be activated well before impact. With SAFE, partners Continental and THI will help to reduce the number of road fatalities by around half in the long term, while the – long-term – potential in emerging markets and developing countries is even greater.

At the Continental booth, both development partners demonstrate a solution for use in the industrial environment. The expertise accumulated in the automotive industry can thus also be transferred to applications in the intralogistic context. Using the example of an industrial truck, the technology partners demonstrate how connected sensor technology can help to significantly improve driving and industrial safety in intralogistics. Work accidents in warehouses can therefore be reduced, while also enabling the automation of industrial trucks. It provides the basis for a fully connected, integrated and automated warehouse of the future.

The stand will exhibit an innovative pedestrian dummy with artificial muscles that imitate the movements of a person. In the future, the dummy will be used in the development of vehicle surroundings sensors such as lidar, radar and camera systems as well as for the validation of these sensors. One of the challenges facing vehicle surroundings sensors is the influence of the environment on the signals that need to be evaluated. As an example, the influence of fog is demonstrated on the design. For this purpose, three common types of sensor “monitor” the pedestrian dummy while the visible area is impaired by fog. The changes can be clearly seen when the sensor signals received are visualized.