Humanetics announced its UFOnano, an ultra-flat overrunable (UFO) robot platform, a low-maintenance, compact ADAS safety device to run fully autonomous pedestrian and collision mitigation testing. Its goal is to facilitate and improve vulnerable road user (VRU) safety testing.
As future roads become occupied by autonomous vehicles, the safety industry seeks to make roads safer for all road users, including cyclists and pedestrians. Humanetics found that existing products to improve active safety testing for both vehicle occupants and pedestrians were too big to execute shoulder-to-shoulder testing. According to the company, this created a strong demand for a compact testing solution.
The UFOnano can drive a curve in every radius and even “turn on the spot” for more representative real-life test scenarios mimicking true-to-life pedestrian behavior. With its compact and functional design, it is also applicable for pedestrian “swarm testing,” where five or more vehicles are tested simultaneously. It also allows flexibility under diverse scenarios as it is small enough for swarm testing with its very low profile, but also offers stability, high accuracy using an integrated RTK-GPS system, and is overrunable.
The UFOnano platform is fully integrated into the Humanetics UFO base control environment for complex testing using up to nine robots from the Humanetics family. It is designed for commonly-used VRU dummies as well as for the next-generation of highly sophisticated human replicas. They have also integrated swappable batteries to guarantee no downtime at the proving ground.
The stealth surface of the UFOnano provides a advantage because of its sleek material characteristics. The UFOnano’s stealth design makes it invisible to vehicle radar, a necessity for Humanetics customers and their realistic test conditions.
Markus Schmidl, Humanetics’ Global Director of Active Safety Sales said, “We started in the active safety business more than 10 years ago when we were approached by a client to develop a platform that a test car could run over without damage. So, we created an ultra-flat overrunable robot for active safety testing, which is now known as the UFOpro and used by many Euro NCAP labs, TIER1s and car manufacturers all over the world. We are convinced that this new UFOnano robotic platform will further help us to improve road safety for vulnerable road users and bring us one step closer to protecting human potential.”
