Honda Sensing – New active driver assist package from Honda
Honda has announced the development of its own active driver assistance package, Honda Sensing, which will be equipped in its all-new Honda Legend large sedan flagship to be launched later this year and subsequently trickle down to lower models in the range.
The system monitors the vehicle’s surrounding through two different sensors – a millimetre-wave radar mounted in the front grille to locate objects and a forward-looking monocular camera at the base of the rear mirror to provide visual detection. Processing the input from these two sensors, the system is able to accordingly operate features such as autonomous braking, traffic jam queue assist, lane departure warning, active cruise control, and a world’s first pedestrian avoidance function.
According to Honda, the millimetre-wave radar has been refined in its operation to enable more effective detection of pedestrians, previously difficult to ascertain by older systems due to their low rate of radio wave reflection as well as speed. The monocular camera complements the radar’s improved accuracy with its ability to accurately identify visual attributes and sizes of pedestrians and various potential hazard within a range of 60m of the vehicle.
This refined detection of pedestrians allowed Honda to introduce a world’s first Pedestrian Collision Mitigation System, which provides audio and visual warnings followed by active steering intervention in the event a pedestrian collision is forecasted by the system.
Including pedestrian avoidance, a total of eight systems make up the Honda Sensing package, most of them being similar to existing active and autonomous driver assist systems already available in the market, albeit labeled with Honda-specific names – autonomous emergency braking is identified as Collision Mitigation Braking System (CMBS), lane departure warning is Lane Keeping Assist System (LKAS), whilst Adaptive Cruise Control is self explanatory.
Through the monocular camera, the Honda Sensing package monitors not only various potential hazards, but also road signs for the Traffic Sign Recognition system and road markings for Road Departure Mitigation, which applies corrective steering inputs if it detects the vehicle is straying off the road.
The millimetre-wave radar, meanwhile, helps the system positively ascertain the distance of various objects from the vehicle; this is particularly useful in serving Active Cruise Control; False Start Prevention, which prevents forceful starts in the event an object is detected ahead; and Lead Car Departure Notification, which gives audio and visual notification if the car directly in front moves off in stop-and-go traffic.
Pictures: Official Honda release.
