Honda designs advanced braking system for pedestrian detection to prevent collisions

Japanese automobile manufacturer Honda has designed an automatic braking system that will detect pedestrians and automatically slows down the car or stop it entirely if it senses that the car can hit someone walking on the road. This automatic braking system functions up to a speed of 60 kph and it said that it will be implementing this advanced braking system in its offerings from this year.

The Legend, a luxury sedan from Honda will be featuring this technology when the car is launched towards the end of 2014.  A worldwide rollout is expected to happen on key new cars in the Japanese carmaker’s lineup. Honda states that this will be the first system developed exclusively for detecting pedestrians but other car manufacturers already have their own collision detection technologies. Volvo has already showcased its collision detection system around four years ago. However, its original version was able to detect pedestrians  only above a height of 80 cm and higher. It is not yet clear if the Japanese carmaker’s anti-collision technology will have similar restrictions.

The advanced braking system functions by combining different signals it receives through millimeter wave radar sensors as well as the camera and the end goal for the carmaker as well as other is utilizing this advanced technology with other intuitive driving systems to develop commercially feasible self-driving cars. It is also rumored that the first commercially available self-driven car could be launched by the year 2020.

The Japanese automobile maker also states that its new anti-collision system is capable to stop cars at the right time so as to avoid a collision, even if the car is being driven at a speed of 37 MPH. Honda says that this is extremely fast as compared to what other anti collision technologies can handle. However,  Volvo’s and Mercedes’ systems function even if the vehicle moves at  a speed of 50 MPH, even though these technologies are not specifically developed for pedestrian detection. Honda has not yet announced how much this new technology cost for installation but it is expected to come inbuilt with the Legend luxury sedan which will be debuting in 2014.

Automatic braking systems can detect any kind of obstacles using cameras and radar. On detecting any kind of an obstacle, they automatically slow down the car or bring it to a halt completely so as to avoid an accident. Different car manufacturers have devised braking systems that can easily detect other cars. However, technologies that can precisely differentiate between pedestrians and cars are much in demand in Japan as well as in Europe. The new anti-braking technology developed by Honda uses millimeter wave radar as well as a high-resolution camera for detecting pedestrians much sooner than other standard braking systems. It can avoid a collision even if the car is being at a speed of 60 kph. This is double as fast as other conventional systems designed by other carmakers. Honda would be installing the braking system first in the Legend luxury sedan, which is expected to release in this year itself.