Pedestrian Injury Mitigating System

More than 12 000 pedestrians and cyclists are killed and almost 300 000 are seriously injured in traffic accidents in the EU every year. A pre-crash detecting system based on an infrared camera and vision analysis will detect a pedestrian at a distance of up to 10 m and activate protective functions or actions in the car, thereby reducing the risk for the pedestrian to be killed or seriously injured. The PIMS project will use a new approach to make uncooled infrared imaging detector arrays. The technology has been invented and in part verified in a cooperative project by KTH and Acreo. A novel method for integration of a miniature camera lens invented by Umicore will be developed. SensoNor will contribute to the project with a miniature vacuum package for the detector chip with the ultimate target to design a wafer-level manufacturing process. These technologies have the potential to reduce the manufacturing cost of an infrared camera system by an order of magnitude in large volume production compared to presently available products. The project will develop IR-sensors and optics for the IR camera, develop an algorithm and perform a system concept evaluation. This will be used as input to the subsequent industrialisation phase. The project received the EUREKA/EURIMUS label on December 5, 2005.