Harman Has a New Blind Spot Detection System

Reports say that blind spots kill or injure 15,000 pedestrians a year in the US. To counter this, Harman has developed a new safety system called Reverse Pedestrian Detection.

This revolutionary system combines data from an array of existing Harman technologies fitted to the car, including a sensor and rear camera to spot pedestrians behind the vehicle. According to Harman, it can also spot smaller children, aged between 12 and 23 months, who are most vulnerable to being hit.

Harman senior director of machine learning, Danny Atsmon, said that despite the launch of an array of safety technologies found in today’s cars and even with the most attentive drivers, ‘back over’ accidents cause several deaths and injuries. He noted that tragically, more than 70 percent of incidents involving children are caused by a parent or relative behind the wheel.

Reverse Pedestrian Detection technology utilizes computer vision methods and a fish eye camera to spot pedestrians behind the vehicle and fuses it with data from ultrasonic sensors for close pedestrian verification. To enhance accuracy, the application also utilizes the steering wheel angle and speed for calculating possible collision trajectories.

Atsmon added that reversing cameras increase the driver’s field of vision, but there is still an area on either side of the car that is not covered and traditional reversing sensors are enhanced to spot larger obstacles. “No system is infallible and the driver must still take caution, using mirrors or glancing over their shoulder.”

Harman’s new system is based on software implementation without the need of extra hardware and is available to automakers now.

Atsmon concluded that as they work toward bringing this software to carmakers, they have implemented an approach that would enable the software to be housed in existing vehicle infotainment systems to reduce the cost and designed to fit into as many automakers’ vehicles as possible.