The effect of sensor errors on the performance of collision warning systems

Collision warning systems work on the information provided by different sensors. Among many factors that can affect the performance of collision warning systems, the effect of sensor errors is investigated. Errors in direct measurements and derivatives are analysed based on typical sensor configurations of collision warning systems, which include a laser speedometer, a Radar/Lidar. Empirical sensor outputs under real traffic situations are used in deriving distributions of measurement errors. The uncertainties of collision warning criteria are then examined based on empirically derived sensor errors for three collision warning algorithms, the Honda, Mazda and NHTSA algorithm. It is found that under some problematic traffic situations and for certain algorithms, the sensor errors could significantly affect the performance of collision warning systems.