Safe
“Our ultimate goal is to avoid all accidents ”
Safety is a top priority for car manufacturers. Developments range from improving passive safety – that is, systems that are activated when an accident happens - to increasing active safety, where technology helps to avoid accidents.
“There are still gaps within active safety. Some elements are already in place in today’s cars, such as traction control, ABS and ESC but the ultimate goal is vehicles that can avoid accidents completely,” says Nordine Chekaoui, responsible for Semcon’s Safe attribute.
Semcon is currently involved in research projects focusing on the balance between passive and active safety, but is also investing in the analysis of new materials such as composites. Another growing area is communication between vehicles and the road-side infrastructure. Transmitters in the landscape can serve as reference points for the car, which can also interpret traffic signs or the colour of traffic lights, for example. At red the car could stop automatically or warn the driver to brake in time. “It’s crash prevention with a smart dimension. The driver is helped to make the right decision,” Chekaoui says.
Semcon has a broad range of competences in vehicle safety - ranging from passive Safety, HMI, sensor technology to active Safety. For most OEMs, the passenger and pedestrain safety is a major attribute, and a 5 star rating in EuroNCAP for a car is a must. The population of the earth is increasing, more and more cars are produced, larger and larger cities with more dense traffic, more and more complex traffic environments - this is the reality.
Goverments and OEMs work hard to find safer traffic solutions, and future vehicle safety will be a mix of the passive and active safety of the vehicle itself, the road and traffic system and the coming importance of communcation between vehicle and infrastructure.
Semcon will take its place in this development and assist and support our customers in acchieveing targets like "Zero deaths in car accidents by 2030". To be able to do this, we need to develop our competences, tools, methods and facilities.
The following picture describes the range of competences that we have inside Semcon, as well as the areas where we have collaboration partners.
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