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Canberra Today 13°/16° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Volvo heads to Tidbinbilla to research our kangaroos

kangaroos

SWEDISH car maker Volvo’s plan to develop technology that can detect kangaroos to avoid collisions is progressing with local testing involving real kangaroos beginning at Tidbinbilla.

In a world first, a team of Volvo safety engineers has arrived from Sweden to study and film the roadside behaviour of kangaroos in their natural setting.

The data Volvo collects will be used to develop Australia’s first kangaroo detection and collision avoidance software.

Volvo is developing a system that uses radar and camera technology to detect kangaroos and automatically apply the brakes if an accident is imminent.

“Whereas Volvo’s Pedestrian Detection technology is geared towards city driving, animal detection is designed to work at highway speeds,” said Volvo’s Senior Safety Engineer, Martin Magnusson.

“Kangaroos are very unpredictable animals and difficult to avoid, but we are confident we can refine our animal detection technology to detect them and avoid collisions on the highway.

“In Sweden we have done research involving larger, slower moving animals like elk, reindeer and cows which are a serious threat on our roads. Kangaroos are smaller than these animals and their behaviour is more erratic. This is why it’s important that we test and calibrate our technology on real kangaroos in their natural environment.

“Volvo’s City Safety truly is state of the art technology, because the brakes can be primed in milliseconds, much faster than a human.

“We are only at the beginning of what is possible.”

How kangaroo detection works

Kangaroo research is an evolution of technology Volvo originally developed under the umbrella of City Safety, to detect, cars, cyclists and pedestrians at day or night. Volvo’s technology uses a very advanced light sensitive, high-resolution camera to detect animals.

A radar sensor in the grille scans the road ahead to detect moving objects like animals, cars, cyclists and pedestrians. A camera in the windscreen works in parallel with the radar to detect which way the object is moving and help the computer decide what action to take, if any.

The system processes 15 images every second and can react to an emergency in half the time of a human. Volvo says it takes 1.2 seconds for an attentive driver to detect danger and then apply the brakes, compared to about 0.0.5 seconds for the computer system

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Ian Meikle, editor

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