Safety Testing: Robotic Road Rage

Ford Motor Company engineers are using robots to crash shopping carts, bicycle
wheels and balls into vehicle doors to test its new state-of-the-art, pressure-based Carts, Bikes and Balls… Oh My!
air bag sensors. These scrupulously scientific tests are part of Ford’s ongoing efforts
to accelerate new collision protection and avoidance technologies as customers Ford engineers
increasingly demand safety features. conduct
unusual tests
to calibrate the
sensitivity of air
bag pressure
sensors to help
make sure
minor events don’t trick the new system
as it operates at amazing speeds that
could deploy an air bag in less than a
millisecond, literally faster than the blink
of an eye.

New Tests for New Tech

Cart or Car Crash?

In one test, a lab robot repeatedly pushes a shopping cart loaded with a 110-lbs. weight –
more than the average grocery order – into the vehicle doors at 10 miles per hour.
Engineers use advanced computers to take thousands of sensor impact readings.

Pedaling Safety
One robotic test
replicates the impact
of a bicycle on the Side air bag systems on some new Ford
car door, helping vehicles use pressure pulses from a side
engineers further refine impact to deploy 30 percent faster than
the sensors to ignore a traditional air bag system that uses
this type of impact acceleration-based sensors.
situation that likely Pressure-based sensors help predict
wouldn’t be harmful to crash forces before the full impact
the vehicle occupant in occurs and more accurately measure
a real-world incident. accident crash severity to help better
differentiate between a potentially
dangerous air bag-deployable crash
and relatively harmless daily abuse that
should not require air bag protection.
Foul Ball
By ramming car doors
with carts, wheels and
a tool that replicates
a hard-thrown ball,
Ford engineers can
calibrate the air bag
sensor to disregard
typically minor
mishaps that happen
in neighborhoods
every day.

5/2009 for more information, go to WWW.media.ford.com