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Functional Safety

The goal of functional safety is to ensure that organizations provide dependable products to external customers.

As PRECO’s solutions have grown, our products have also begun the testing process with non-automotive applications. Increasingly collaborating with the automotive industry and developing products for fully autonomous automotive vehicle applications. A trend that further emphasizes the need for increased safety oversight described as Functional Safety[i]. 

In previous posts, we’ve looked at the difference between RADAR and LiDAR, and between RADAR and ultrasonic sensors. While there are significant differences between these three types of sensors, they have one thing in common: They are all used to increase safety by identifying and locating both still and moving obstacles relative to the path of a vehicle. RADAR sensors do this by emitting radio waves. LiDAR uses high frequency laser light. Ultrasonic sensors emit high-pitched sound waves.

Developing smart vehicles requires a tradeoff: As the vehicle gets more intelligent, it also gets more complex. You can look no further than the number and kinds of sensors newer vehicles now come equipped with to appreciate just how complex. These vehicles that once started as little more than an engine, four wheels, and some brakes have become highly sophisticated computers on wheels.

PRECO Electronics® has been designing and manufacturing short range radar sensors since 2001.  Extensive testing of these sensors is required to validate operation.  Older versions of the PreView® Radar sensors had a short detection range (<10 meters) and the PRECO engineering team has been able to do much of the performance testing on an indoor test range.  The latest generation of PreView® sensors, such as the Sentry™, have a much longer detection range of 30 meters, necessitating a different testing area.

It’s no secret that in order to be successful, a company requires two things: a healthy bottom line and a clean safety record. As technology improves and data tracking becomes easier, safety and savings can go hand in hand.

Safety is paramount to the manufacturers of heavy duty equipment and automobiles today. Innovation is driving the car industry to go well beyond the simplicity of seat belts and automatic brake systems. More and more, advanced technological systems are becoming common place in our cars, trucks, and transportation equipment.

If you have been driving for ten or more years, you are no doubt amazed to see the endless stream of driver assistance technologies being added to passenger cars. You can almost hear your parents grumbling, “In my day, people actually had to pay attention to where they were going!” Such mundane necessities are quickly becoming a thing of the past as drivers are learning to rely more and more on the technology that surrounds them and less and less on their own faculties. If drivers are safer as a result of new technology, then it’s all for the better. But, as a fleet manager, there is more at stake than safely getting from point A to point B.

Safety is expensive. Without it, a single accident could be enough to bring down an entire company. Properly enforced, it comes with recurring costs for training, equipment, and extending time on the job to make sure it’s done the right way without cutting corners. Either way, money will be spent. This begs the question: when does it make the most sense to spend money on safety?

The National Highway Safety Traffic Administration attributes 94 percent of all crashes to human error, mostly associated with recognition and decision errors. Research and testing done so far on autonomous vehicles point toward a much safer world. But making vehicles smart enough to navigate an incredibly complex world is not happening overnight.

With the development of new vehicle safety technology comes the ever-present danger of complacency. Traffic signals were once a sensation - drivers knew to slow down on yellow and stop on red. Today drivers tend to treat a yellow light turning red like the final sprint of a race. They charge full-speed ahead and safety becomes the back seat driver that is often dismissed.