Development of sensor based front end collision avoidance system for highways

Potential of hazards due to collision between the automobiles are severe and often life threatening. The reason found for collision in most of the cases was inattention of the driver due to long and exhausting drive. The chances of front end collision thus become unavoidable in highways. Front end collision avoidance system (FECAS) work independently and is designed to reduce the speed of a vehicle automatically on probability of potential crash. The work done on FECAS for minimizing the chances of collision is presented here. The work focuses on the collision avoidance between the two vehicles moving one after another by detecting the position of the preceding vehicle and controlling the speed of the host vehicle that carries the FECAS. A fusion of sensors was used to get the information about the position and speed of the preceding vehicle. Speed of the host vehicle was gradually or immediately reduced accordingly. Virtual system modeling was carried out and tested with hardware in loop simulation for sensors and actuation performance. Finally, the FECAS was incorporated on scaled model of a car and tested in the real environment. Successful controlling of the car was achieved under all conditions. The car came to complete halt at a distance varying between 0.65 m to 2.5 m and no incidence of collision occurred when the car was in the critical zone.