When it comes to vehicle safety and collision-related technology, the U.S. Army meets the task head-on.
And it’s doing a such bang-up job in avoiding accidents in car and truck fleets, it has become a leader in collision avoidance systems in the U.S. auto industry.
The Army has had a large automotive presence here in suburban Detroit since before World War II. It just didn’t brag about it much until the Cold War ended about a decade ago.
Then the Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM) opened its bag of tricks to the commercial sector under the “dual-use”–military and commercial–mandate that has spread through the U.S. military.
And what a Collision Avoidance Technology bag it is.
There’s infrared imaging, heads-up displays, collision avoidance and adaptive cruise control.
Cadillac, for example, is offering a military-based night-vision system developed for the Persian Gulf War on its 2000 model DeVille. It allows the driver to see beyond the range of the headlights.
The Army and the domestic automakers also are working to make cars more visible.
Starting with computer models that show how things look in infrared, the Amry’s Survivability Technology Area, part of the Tank-Automotive Research, Development & Engineering Center (TARDEC), transferred that “to the visible part of the spectrum–how people see, how drivers see things,” said Dr. Thomas Meitzler, who for 10 years has been a research engineer with the unit.
The transfer began when some representatives of the General Motors Technical Center saw what the Army was doing. “They got us thinking about ways to work with the Big Three in terms of making their cars easier to see. The Army’s always concerned with making their vehicles harder to see (combat camouflage), and car companies and safety engineers need to have their cars more detectable,” Meitzler said.
With funding arranged by Dennis Wend of the National Automotive Center (NAC), the Army’s auto technology transfer arm, the Army created the Visual Perception Laboratory with GM and Ford.
“We run tests to see what makes the cars more visible,” Meitzler said.
“Changes such as larger taillights, third tallights and reflective paint all pre-dated the advent of collision avoidance technology,” said Mitchell Kozera, a NAC engineer. “Collision avoidance systems are very new to the arena of commercial autos,” so it’s too early to list their effects.
At the New York Auto Show last month, Ford boasted the 2000 Taurus has taillamps that are 60 percent larger and turn signals two times larger than before to improve visibility from the rear.
The Army’s interest in safety and collision avoidance stems from the fact that worldwide it operates 250,000 vehicles, a fleet that traveled 672 million miles in 1997 alone.
“According to a 1996 study by the NAC, during peacetime, 42 percent of soldier fatalities occur in vehicle accidents during convoy situations. The associated costs were measured to total as much as $25 million annually,” said Kozera.
Collision avoidance systems, such as adaptive cruise control, were developed to alert vehicle operators of impending collisions and controlling headway between vehicles in convoys, he said. Adaptive cruise control works with the throttle and braking system to keep 1 to 300 feet between vehicles.
The two technologies also improved “visibility” in bad weather and smoke and when the driver is fatigued from long stretches behind the wheel.
“It’s a technology that pretty much had its research life cycle from about 1993 to 1996. So the research and development for collision warning is essentially finished at this point, so the benefits of the technology are being utilized right now in the vehicle fleet,” added Kozera, who had worked on GM’s Advanced Vehicle Engineering/Design staff and who, with Meitzler, is a civilian employee in the TARDEC lab.
“It was developed specifically for all of the tactical-wheeled-vehicle fleet. So that would be all of the truck vehicles in the Army, anything from a Humvee all the way up to a Palletized Loading System, which is a 17-ton, tractor-type vehicle to haul tanks,” he added.
Ford is marketing a version of the collision avoidance system on its Windstar mini-van. A beep notifies the driver of pending rear bumper collisions and rear blind-spot intrusions.
“It operates the same way as our military system–it’s a microwave radar system that `samples’ the area in front of the sensors at a specific frequency, several million times per second and then sends a message to the operator of an impending collision situation (through a beep from the dashboard),” said NAC’s Kozera. This system has been offered in commercial vehicles for several years.
On the 1999 auto-show circuit, Cadillac displayed a concept version of a two-seat roadster called the Evoq that will use “heads-up” technology. In jet fighters, it projects vehicle speed onto the windshield so the pilot needn’t take his eyes off his target.
GM was the first automaker to offer a heads-up display, developed by its Hughes Electronics subsidiary for the aerospace industry and commercial use, in its 1996 Pontiac Grand Prix. But it never caught on with motorists. The Evoq system will project a driver’s e-mail and stock quotes onto the windshield.
The military and commercial research labs also must account for the human element.
“It’s still a man-in-the-loop system,” Meitzler said. “You can’t take the person out of the loop. We’re finding that you can’t separate the person from the technology. They have to work together.”
SAFE DRIVING
According to research at the General Motors Traffic Safety Group at the GM Proving Ground in Milford, Mich., here are various things that affect safe driving.
NIGHT DRIVING
– Fatal car crashes are three times more likely to occur at night.
– 60 percent of all speed-related fatalities occur between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m.
– The ability to see in the dark begins to diminish in the mid-teens. The average 39-year-old needs four times as much light to see as a 13-year-old.
RADAR VS. EYE
Radar is unaffected by the following factors that often limit or alter eyesight such as rain, fog, mud, snow, bright sun and car vibration/bumpy road.
CRASH FACTORS
Here are main causes of accidents and the percentage of crashes they figure into:
Factor % of accidents
Speed 11.6
Right of way 8.7
Following too close 8.0
Ignore a control
(i.e. running a stoplight) 7.1
Sleep/inattention 4.1
Passing violation 2.4
Failure to signal 0.9
%%
STOPPING DISTANCES
– At 35 m.p.h. it takes 106 feet to stop; at 50 m.p.h. that distance grows to 243 feet.
– Reaction time for drivers peaks in the 20s and declines in their 30s. There is a uniform decline among men and women drivers in their 30s.
– On average, the time it takes to respond to visual stimulus by taking the foot off of the accelerator and applying the brake is seven- to eight-tenths of a second.
THE TALK
Though the Army is big on collision avoidance, thus is not the case with acronym avoidance. Here’s a glossary to help with the latter:
– TACOM–Tank-automotive and Armaments Command. TACOM is the governing body; life-cycle manager, who researches and develops field and support mobility and armament systems– combat and tactical vehicles, trailers, construction equipment, tactical bridges and rail and watercraft and howitzers–throughout their life; and integrator, integrating science and technology, R&D, acquisition, logistics sustainment soldier readiness, for the Army’s ground combat equipment, including 250,000 tracked and wheeled vehicles worldwide. Web site: www.tacom.army.mil.
TACOM, based in Warren, Mich., is the home of the Detroit Tank Arsenal, which was built in 1941 and produced 17,000 tanks and tracked vehicles for the U.S. and its allies through 1996.
The arsenal half of the military base was ceded to Warren under the Pentagon Base Closure and Realignment Plan in 1997. The former Detroit Tank Arsenal/tank assembly plant is now a commercial factory run by DCT (Detroit Center Tool) Corp., which produces automotive assembly line equipment for worldwide export.
TACOM continues to occupy the other half of the site.
– TARDEC–Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center. TARDEC, the military equivalent of a commercial automotive research lab, is one of two research and development centers at TACOM. (The other is the Armament Research & Development Center (ARDEC), a weapons lab at Picatinny Arsenal, N.J.)
– NAC–Part of TARDEC, the U.S. Army’s National Automotive Center is the technology transfer arm that integrates commercial and military research. Visit its Web site at www.tacom.army.mil/tardec/nac.
– VPL–Visual Perception Laboratory. In the TARDEC engineering center, the VPL is a $5 million laboratory that studies the science of driver vision for military and commercial automotive clients. Classified military experiments are also conducted here.
For more information on commercial applications of military research and technology, check out these Web sites:
– www.simtlc.org–a program related to Simulation Throughout the Life Cycle. It shows the Army’s efforts to reduce times for developing its weapons and vehicles, similar to such efforts by automakers to bring cars out faster.
– www.defenselink.mil–the U.S. Department of Defense site links to U.S. military initiatives. %%
