A novel approach for the probabilistic computation of Time-To-Collision

Reliability and fault tolerance are very important criteria in the design and development of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). Modern driver assistance systems rely on several sources of information such as radar or image processing. A reliable system has to handle the uncertainty with the information it receives as input, in order to make robust and reliable decisions. In the situation analysis the Time metrics such as Time-To-Collision (TTC), Time-To-Brake (TTB), Time-To-React (TTR) are criticality measures assessing the risk potential of traffic situation. Such measures can be used to trigger warnings and emergency maneuvers in driver assistance systems. This paper presents an efficient algorithm to compute the probability distribution of TTC induced by an uncertain system input and thus allows to use TTC as a more robust and reliable probabilistic activation condition. The accuracy of the presented method was proven in the simulation using the example of several types of crossing scenarios.