External airbags that pop out from the side of cars are the latest safety innovations being developed for the motoring industry and could be on cars by 2020.
The bags deploy from the sill beneath doors in 20-30 milliseconds and protect the side of the vehicle from impact.
Designers are hard at work developing radar and camera systems to detect the precise moment the outside airbag needs to be triggered.
The bags will deploy from the sill beneath the doors in 20-30 milliseconds
Auto industry supplier ZF has come up with a system that fires out an airbag from the side of the car when a T-bone crash is imminent.
The airbag would minimize the energy of the impact and better protect the car's passengers.
ZF is in talks with potential customers and could have it on production cars in just two years.
The idea has been floating around for several years and researchers have found that even by reducing the intrusion of one car into the other by around an inch can improve the survivability of crashes.
The exterior airbag is essentially a big pillow on the outside of the car and creates what ZF calls a 'lateral crumple zone'.
Side crashes currently account for around 37-40 per cent of car accidents
The introduction of outside airbags is easier now than in the past thanks to the improvement in car technology with a multitude of sensors like cameras, radars, ultrasonics, and lidars, which detect vehicles and objects in the environment.
A car's computer can determine if a crash is imminent and unavoidable.
Some cars already have features such as seat belt tightening or even closing windows moments before impact.
'Adding an exterior airbag to the toolkit provides several benefits. By absorbing the energy of the crash, it leaves more room for the airbags inside the car to deploy properly and work as intended,' according to Wired.
The airbags being tested 6.6 feet long, 1.8 feet tall, and 1.3 feet wide. That makes for a volume of between 300 and 350 liters, about five times bigger than a typical driver airbag.
ZF's engineers had to find ways to build the device into the side of the vehicle without marring the exterior design. 'You only want to see it when it's being deployed,' says Norbert Kagerer, ZF's engineering chief for passive safety systems.
The airbag is tucked it into the rocker panel, just below the doors.
TRW Automotive has developed plans for airbags to deploy from the sill beneath the side doors of vehicles. Using radar and camera systems the airbags will deploy a fraction of a second before impact, helping to reduce injuries to the occupants of cars
GM received a patent last November for an external airbag designed to "provide protection to a pedestrian" in a crash.
“The pedestrian protection airbag could become an important engineering solution in the future,” said Tom Wilkerson, safety communications spokesman for GM.
Other automakers are working on their own passenger-protection ideas. Daimler, which owns Mercedes-Benz, has a patent for a way to install airbags in the framework at the sides of the windshield as a way to cushion the potential blow to pedestrians. Volkswagen has explored airbag alternatives, too.
In 2012, Volvo unveiled the world's first external airbags on its V40.
Sensors located in the hood of the car register contact between the car and a person before the hood is blown upwards
This deflects the person away from the windscreen, while an airbag is simultaneously deployed to cushion them.
Meanwhile, TRW Automotive hope to have the bags fitted on premium German saloons before the end of the decade.
Vice-president of TRW, Norbert Kagerer, said: 'Side crashes are still one of the highest accident rates, accounting for 37-40 per cent of accidents.'
The development project is being funded by the EU and began in 2010 in Spain.
If successful the new technology will feature on premium German saloons before the end of the decade
Google's has also been working on a self-driving car that could have airbags both inside and out.
A 2015 patent shows an external airbag system in action that inflates if the car hits a pedestrian or other object.
The airbags would be made a new 'memory foam' material that doesn't simply cause the pedestrian to bounce off.
The patent is for 'a system for protecting a pedestrian during impact with a vehicle.'
It could even be sold and attached to other cars, the patent says.
'The system having a bumper adapted for attachment to an end of the vehicle.'
Google's patent shows an external airbag system to protect pedestrians and cars in the event of a crash
It explains how the system works, with cells in the material popping like bubble wrap to stop the pedestrian simply bouncing off.
'The bumper is comprised of a plurality of air sacs.
'The bumper undergoes plastic deformation during impact with the pedestrian as the at least some of the air sacs burst during impact, and wherein the bursting of some of the plurality of air sacs reduces spring back of the bumper on the pedestrian.'
Of course, the hard part for any system is to properly detect when a crash is about to happen.
If the airbag fails to fire then the technology is useless. If it fires at the wrong time then there it's a mess to clean up.
Ultimately, if it does work, any kind of new 'exterior pillow' could soften the blow, and save lives doing it.
Link hienalouca.comhttps://hienalouca.com/2018/12/01/external-airbags-could-be-on-cars-within-two-years/
Main photo article External airbags that pop out from the side of cars are the latest safety innovations being developed for the motoring industry and could be on cars by 2020.
The bags deploy from the sill beneath doors in 20-30 milliseconds and protect the side of the vehicle from impact.
Designers are hard at ...
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Emily Ratajkowski is a showman, on and off the stage. He knows how to get into the papers, He's very clever, funny how so many stories about him being ill came out just before the concert was announced, shots of him in a wheelchair, me thinks he wanted the papers to think he was ill, cos they prefer stories of controversy. Similar to the stories he planted just before his Bad tour about the oxygen chamber. Worked a treat lol. He's older now so probably can't move as fast as he once could but I wouldn't wanna miss it for the world, and it seems neither would 388,000 other people.
Dianne Reeves US News HienaLouca
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