Proactive SAFEty systems and tools for a constantly UPgrading road environment - SAFE-UP

The EU funded project “SAFE-UP” addresses the upcoming safety challenges related to Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs) and occupant protection systems in future road traffic and mobility scenarios

SAFE-UP combines the competences of 18 partners including leading universities and selected industrial partners to develop safety systems in future transport and mobility scenarios. The SAFE-UP consortium will develop innovative technologies, testing and assessment methods based on the occupant safety over a three-year project run. The project is funded with an overall budget of 8 million € by the Horizon 2020 framework programme of the European Commission.

The project is based on three key pillars: future safety-critical scenarios, new safety technologies and novel safety assessment methodologies. Future safety critical scenarios will be designed and analysed in a highly automated and mixed traffic environment in a traffic simulation platform. Based on these scenarios, new safety technologies for active and passive systems will be developed, resulting in four demonstrators. The passive safety system of Demonstrator 1 will include restraint and occupant monitoring technologies for new seating positions. Three active safety system prototypes will be developed. Demonstrator 2 will enhance the interaction between vehicles and VRUs under bad weather conditions while Demonstrator 3 will integrate advanced intervention functions to avoid critical events. Demonstrator 4 will consist of a safety solution based on Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) to enable timely warning provisions. To prove the overall benefits, new safety assessment methodologies will be thoroughly designed.

The aim of the new technologies is to reduce fatalities by covering pedestrians, cyclists and Powered Two Wheelers in urban areas through active safety systems and cars in non-urban areas through passive safety technologies, which ideally affect 64 % of all road fatalities. SAFE-UP will also develop targeted education and training schemes for fostering the implementation of automated driving functions, while also focusing on raising awareness of future road safety challenges.

Within SAFE-UP, ika will focus on different work packages. The first aim is to determine future safety-critical traffic interactions by means of behavioural simulations and develop metrics to describe non-safety-critical scenarios. The created cases will be used in a different work package to carry out an In-Crash simulation to clarify the potential of the combination of a monitoring system and an advanced restraint system for future seating positions. The simulation will be carried out on full vehicle level, using innovative human body models.