Communications Technology

Researchers at Cranfield University in England have developed an external airbag they say will significantly reduce pedestrian fatalities and injuries in the event of a crash.

The system deploys a hood - or bonnet, as the British call it - airbag at the base of the windshield, which research shows is where a pedestrian’s head is most likely to hit. The system uses radar and infrared technology to “pre-detect” a collision and inflates quickly enough to cushion the impact, said Roger Hardy of the university’s Cranfield Impact Centre.

“Test results indicate that the system works extremely well,” Hardy said of the system, which was tested on a Fiat Stilo. “When fitted to a demonstrator vehicle not originally designed with pedestrian protection in mind, the results were well inside all current legal criteria for pedestrian protection currently in force in Europe.”

Pedestrian fatalities are a growing concern in the European Union, where statistics show more than 8,000 pedestrians and cyclists were killed in 2007. Of those crashes, 646 occurred in the United Kingdom. The EU has adopted regulations aimed at reducing the risk to pedestrians by, among other things, mandating the use of brake-assist systems to reduce stopping distances. Automakers also have been trying to address the issue, with Jaguar, for example, introducing the Pedestrian Deployable Bonnet System on the XKR.

What a great idea - take a peek….

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The fastest imaging system ever devised has been demonstrated by researchers reporting in the journal Nature.

Their camera’s “shutter speed” is just a half a billionth of a second, and it can capture over six million images in a second continuously.

Its “flashbulb” is a fast laser pulse dispersed in space and then stretched in time and detected electronically.

The approach will be instrumental in imaging fast-moving or random events, such as communication between neurons.

What is more, the camera works with just one detector, rather than the millions in a typical digital camera.

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