(Completed project, September 2002 – December 2005, European project FP5
IST-2001-38228)
Safety of transportation is essential to the citizen quality of life and to the development of industry. The fact that transport safety is thus compromised by inclement weather conditions is a concern to the public and to authorities and industry trying to optimise safety by improvements of infrastructure and technologies as well as regulations.
Mobility is a need for most citizens. Safety of transportation is essential to the citizen quality of life and to the development of industry. Every year, numerous accidents happen on the roads due to bad visibility (fog, night, heavy rain), Similarly, the recent dramatic aviation accidents in Milan and Zurich have reminded us that aviation safety is equally affected by reduced visibility. The fact that transport safety is thus compromised by inclement weather conditions is a concern to the public and to authorities and industry trying to optimise safety by improvements of infrastructure and technologies as well as regulations.
Infrared sensors are means that could help drivers or pilots to overpass human eyes limitation. Up to now these sensor technologies were not capable of good performances (readability) under all weather conditions. Furthermore it was impossible to demonstrate that these means would not lead to misleading information. It is the goal of the SEE project to address these two limitations for the both automotive and aeronautic domains. On that purpose, the two main SEE objectives are:
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To develop an IR system, based on last un-cooled detector technology, in order to obtain readable and reliable images.
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To develop a vulation of the IR images in order to assess the human performances, based on the state of the art of human factors methodologies
A head up display will be used to enhance sight effectiveness enhancement.
The SEE project will develop two un-cooled IR cameras, design and validate a simulation of IR images for automotive and avionics applications, and evaluate the human performances under different weather conditions by means of the simulator. In addition, dissemination activities will be carried out towards European community. The two cameras will be of Long and Short Wavelengths Infrared Sensor types. The first one will give the see through capability (thermal sensor: microbolometer), the second one will allow a more familiar (human) image (extension of the wavelengths range to the visible). It is the strong commitment of the partners in the project that the merging of both sensors' information will lead to a readable and reliable image.
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| Night time short-wave infrared image. |
Long-wave infrared image. |
The simulation will be based on similar works that were done for military applications. It is the intention of the project to develop a fully validated IR cameras simulation tool for both automotive and avionics applications. This tool will allow a complete human factors evaluation of Enhanced Vision System based on the selected sensors. The developed simulation will be used by Risoe National Laboratory to evaluate the advantage of the IR image from a human factor point of view. Besides Risoe National Laboratory the partners in the project are: Thales Avionics SA (France), Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique (France), Galileo-Avionica S.p.A (Italy). Zeiss Optronik GmbH (Germany), Oktal Synthetic Environment (France), Elektroniksystem-und Logistik – GmbH (Germany), and Bayerische Motoren Werke Aktiengesellschaft (Germany).
Internal publications