though major FOT projects have previously been conducted in North America and Japan.
The project’s basic aim is to collect valuable data from the actual traffic environment using truck mounted cameras and other monitoring systems.
Sponsored by the European Commission, euroFOT involves 28 organizations including vehicle manufacturers and suppliers, research institutes and universities. More than 1,500 cars and trucks will participate in the study. 30 of the trucks involved in the project will be equipped with Volvo’s active safety systems such as Adaptive Cruise Control and Lane Keeping Support, while another 50 trucks will have additional technology for measuring fuel efficiency on board.
Each truck will be equipped with a central computer unit and four video cameras filming the front, “blind spot”, the driver and cab interior. The cameras will record every second the truck is being driven for a year, allowing every little incident to be studied and evaluated. After the tests are completed, the project is expected to have gathered over 70,000,000 megabytes of traffic safety data for analysis.
