Seminars

ME/IE 8773-8774
3RD ANNUAL ME FOUNDERS LECTURE

Driver Assistance and Active Safety

by

Dr. Claus Ehlers
Senior Manager
System Safety and Assisting Systems
DaimlerChrysler AG
Stuttgart, Germany

Wednesday, March 31, 2004
4:00 p.m.
2-650 Moos Tower

This lecture is in honor of Professor James.J. Ryan.

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) enhance driving safety and comfort, supporting the driver by providing information, warning and if necessary, intervention. The introduction of the first safety enhancing systems such as ESP, ABS or brake assist have proved to make significant contributions to crash avoidance with many more systems expected in the future. The wide acceptance of driver supporting systems such as cruise control, adaptive cruise control and lane keeping assist have paved the way for better driver support in passenger cars and commercial vehicles by ADAS.

A prerequisite for ADAS is a clear understanding and interpretation of the driving situation, taking into account the status of both the driver and vehicle. In order to judge the risks in a driving situation, future systems will also have the capability to predict the behavior of the surrounding traffic. The first such systems have been introduced mainly for application on highways but their extension to urban traffic, and thus more complex driving situations at low speeds is clearly coming soon. I will provide a European perspective on driver assistance systems and active safety, with additional reference to certification and liability issues.

Dr. Claus Ehlers is responsible for all corporate research activities at DaimlerChrysler in the area of driver assistance systems, and since March of this year also for system safety. His group conducts a wide variety of activities in the field of active safety systems and ADAS and related issues including system safety, certification and liability issues. In close cooperation with all of the business units of DaimlerChrysler, his group is focused on new technology developments for passenger cars and commercial vehicles as well as implementation into series production. Dr. Ehlers joined DC as a member of the international management associate program in 1997. Since then he has held several positions in the development and research divisions, leading integration projects, assisting the head of Mercedes-Benz passenger car engineering, as well as strategic re-orientation of research activities including vehicle system dynamics and advanced driver assistance systems. His educational background is in mechanical engineering with degrees from the Technical Universities of Karlsruhe and Kaiserslautern.

Detailed program at the Center for transportation studies