How to avoid the night walkers

Technology to boost pedestrian safety and prevent traffic accidents at night has been developed after DENSO announced it had made significant advances to its in-vehicle vision sensors.

In-vehicle sensors are used to identify white lines on roads and objects ahead, and DENSO’s continued development of Advanced Driver Assistant Systems (ADAS) has meant a breakthrough in the sensors’ ability to now detect pedestrians even during night-time conditions.

The New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) is considering including night-time pedestrians within the scope of collision avoidance in its safety performance evaluation standards for automatic braking systems, as traffic accidents at night can often involve pedestrians and cause severe injuries. The newly developed vision sensors will help meet and exceed these upcoming safety standards and reduce the rate of night-time collisions.

DENSO’s development was boosted after working alongside Sony Semiconductor Solutions. Sony holds the largest share of the global image sensors market; manufacturing highly sensitive image sensors used in digital cameras, smartphones and other home electronics, to enable cameras to take clear images of objects even at night.

DENSO has improved the quality of Sony’s image sensors, providing increased ease of installation, greater heat resistance and vibration resistance to support its integration onto vehicle-mounted vision sensors. Through using Sony’s image signal processors (ISPs), DENSO has also reduced noise and further optimised camera exposure parameters to take clearer images and identify pedestrians at night.