Insects fly about in large groups without bumping into each other because they have a natural system that helps them detect obstacles and avoid a collision. Drawing inspiration from insects, scientists have developed a simple detector that can help vehicles avoid collisions. Their study is published in the journal ACS Nano.
While detectors for vehicles do exist, they are often complicated, heavy and do not work very well in the dark. Most fatal vehicle accidents happen at night, because the motorists are often unable to detect the obstacle until too late.
What are existing collision avoidance systems?
Existing collision avoidance systems (CASs) enable a vehicle to automatically brake when an object gets too close. Some analyse an image of the car’s surroundings, but the image can lack clarity in heavy rain or low light. There are complicated signal processors that can make sense of what is still visible, and some vehicles can also incorporate radar sensors, but these need a lot of power and are bulky, adding unnecessary weight to the vehicle.
Insects do not possess any of these fancy circuitry, but they can easily avoid collisions. Their neural circuits, which enable them to avoid obstacles, are highly efficient. Scientists, therefore, used them as an inspiration in creating a collision detector. This would be adapted to sense vehicles and would consume less power than existing CASs.
Based on insects’ neural circuitry, the team first designed an algorithm. Its function was simple: instead of processing an entire image, the algorithm would process only the intensity of a car’s headlights. By minimising the amount of equipment required, the overall detector became smaller and more energy-efficient.
In real-life scenarios at night, the detector could sense a potential two-car accident two to three seconds before it happened. This would leave the driver with enough time to take critical corrective action, according to a press release from the American Chemical Society, which publishes ACS Nano.
ACS quoted the researchers as saying that this novel detector can help make existing CASs better and safer.