Advancing road safety through collaboration: How European research projects enabled large-scale implementation of life-saving ADAS technologies

Over the past decade, European collaborative research projects have played a pivotal role in driving the implementation of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) in vehicles on our roads. Through significant investments and efforts, these projects have fostered innovation, gathered vital data, and established standardized methodologies – all of which have contributed to enhancing road safety across Europe and beyond.

Pioneering projects such as ASSESS1 in 2014 introduced new tests to Euro NCAP protocols, evaluating the performance of Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) in rear-end collision

scenarios between two vehicles. This provided a benchmark for manufacturers to develop such AEB C2C systems. Soon after, the AsPeCSS2 project in 2016 developed the first AEB standardized test for detecting and automatically braking for pedestrians. These initial strides set the stage for more advanced testing of ADAS.

Exploitation of the project results took place obviously as catalytic coated diesel particle filter (DPF) in vehicles with diesel engines. Today, most heavy-duty vehicles and many passenger cars deploy a catalytic coated DPF mitigating emissions with, as intended by the technology, minimal impact on fuel economy. Coatings either deal with oxidation of carbon monoxide (CO) and unburned hydrocarbons (HC) or with selective catalytic reduction (SCR) of nitric oxides (NOx), depending how near to the engine the DPF is installed. Hence the technology fulfils its aim of improving the environmental impact of diesel propelled vehicles.

But beyond, in response to the stringency of Euro 6 regulations and lately with the introduction of WLTP driving cycle and RDE analysis, also cars with petrol engines started to deploy catalytically coated particulate filters in the second half of the 2010s . In this case the filters carry three-way catalyst coatings. As these aftertreatment devices reduce not only NOx, CO and HC, but also capture and convert particulate matter, they are sometimes referred to as four-way catalysts.

This indicates that the work in IPSY and possible successor projects