Supervisory vehicle impact anticipation and control of safety systems

Occupant safety systems are incorporated in vehicles to meet the requirements of occupant protection. For optimum performance safety devices require tailored activation. This paper presents a supervisory control approach using predictive collision sensor information to augment the performance of safety systems. The supervisory approach determines the potential for a collision to occur, and assists in deployment decision-making. Decision-making is based on the obstacle range, and closing velocity information obtained from the anticipatory sensor, and a reference signal indicative of the host-vehicle deceleration. The multi-input supervisory control system consists of a fuzzy rule-based system, which determines the potential for a collision to occur, and deployment command generation for activation of respective safety devices.