Maneuver decision for active pedestrian protection under uncertainty

To reduce fatalities in road accidents, one factor is the protection of pedestrians as vulnerable road users. Active driver assistance systems are able to reduce the accident severity or even avoid collisions with pedestrians. Besides emergency braking, evasive steering interventions or combined lateral and longitudinal maneuvers can increase the accident avoidance potential. For driver assistance system with the ability to perform more than one of these maneuvers a maneuver decision has to be done. Choosing the optimal maneuver can become difficult in case of uncertain pedestrian motion prediction. This paper will introduce a method to identify the optimal emergency maneuver regarding a specific scenario. The advantage compared to the state of the art is the consideration of the pedestrian´s injury risk as well as uncertain future movements. Therefore the difference of certain emergency maneuvers can be quantified and the one with the optimal benefit obtained.