Adapting radar and tracking technology to an on-board automotive collision warning system

Calspan Corporation is currently developing an on-vehicle threat detection system for intersection collision avoidance (ICA) as part of its ICA program with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. This paper briefly reviews the system design and describes recent efforts that include the development of a multitarget tracker/Kalman filter and collision avoidance (C/A) algorithm. A current headway radar was mounted on the Calspan Instrumented Vehicle (CIV) and in traffic data were recorded. Warning functions, developed through simulation, were applied to the recorded data (non-real-time signal processing) and key Kalman filter/tracker parameters were varied. In addition, real-time performance in traffic is demonstrated. This research demonstrates the feasibility of preventing many intersection collisons.