Our ambition

The European Commission has initiated a revision of current safety regulations to account for new developments. VT allows a far wider range of occupant specific characteristics than would ever be viable in physical testing, including factors such as age or size. VIRTUAL will address such limitations and will reach out for new approaches.

 

In line with current visions about safety on European roads, VIRTUAL will advance beyond the state of the art by providing models, tools and protocols for VT in road safety. With increasing complexity of crash configurations more complex assessment of safety systems is needed to develop and identify the best performing systems. Physical testing by organisations such as Euro NCAP and regulatory bodies are considered costly and limited with respect to test scenarios and available crash test dummies.

 

For decades, it has been the hope that VT will complement physical testing and thus reduce the number of physical tests needed, as well as address a greater variety of relevant accident scenarios. Despite various advancements in the field this is yet to happen – but will be achieved by the VIRTUAL project. Beyond the contribution to the state of the art, VIRTUAL provides a strong foundation by warehousing current investments in open source tools and resources.

We aim to...

Models

…openly provide average female, male and child OS-HBMs for VT. The models will represent erect and seated adult males and females and will include postural control functions for human-like pre-crash responses.

Platform

…initiate a platform of models and protocols available to the public. This hub would be designed to ensure continued maintenance of the OS-HBMs and all related tools and models once this research project has ended.

Prototyping

…demonstrate the power of HBMs and VT in safety assessments in specific test cases. These cases will demonstrate the ability of VT to complement physical test regulations.

OS-HBM

…reach a higher degree of bio fidelity and assessment capability of the OS-HBMs by focusing detailed OS-HBM development to these listed test cases. The OS-HBMs will also be prepared for further development in other test cases that must be addressed in future projects.

Crash scenarios

…provide adaption to future crash scenarios with automated vehicles. Future safety assessments must represent the much wider range of impact and usage scenarios as they occur in real traffic.

CBA

…assess the economic efficiency of new safety systems based on VT, by developing a cost-benefit analysis tool appropriate for safety systems, which will be made available to all stakeholders. CBAs will also be conducted for specific cases.