Development of an Advanced Durable Test Target for Autonomous Emergency Brake Testing

Rear-end collisions expose a significant part of all crashes with injuries. The driver assistance autonomous braking function intends to mitigate the effect of the rear-end collisions. Usually, the terminology refers to this function as AEBs (Automated Emergency Braking system). The goal of this assistance to prevent accidents in emergencies where detection-based emergency braking intervention is activated automatically without the driver’s operation. For testing of these functions dedicated target test tools are used which allow tests without considerable damage on the vehicles. There are several available devices today for this purpose which have a significant purchase price and these targets normally can be used in daytime conditions. Since during these investigations of AEB performance, harsh impacts can occur the target has to be robust to endure them. With the help of a comprehensive overview, we are investigating the current test procedures and benchmark actual used test tools for car to car rear-end collision situations. Based on this specification a brand new prototype target has been manufactured. In addition, a unique feature - not included in officially approved targets - has been mounted such as tail-lights and brake lights that extends the possibilities of the test conditions. The purpose of this paper is to present a realistic target that is suitable for night tests and has a tough construction for long term usage and is at the same time a cost-efficient solution. This article demonstrates the developed test target compliance with our requirements defined by us based on inputs coming from industrial experiences, furthermore has to be proved by more different tests in both day and night conditions too. So far the industrial AEB test protocols contained only daylight tests but with the usage of this target, we had the opportunity to investigate AEB performance under limited vision condition which is a big challenge for cameras. The tests were executed with different types of passenger vehicles. The research also points to improvement opportunities based on these test results.