Good news for those of us public transit types who have to share the streets with motorists who seem to have mistaken “Grand Theft
Auto” for a driver education tool: Toyota has developed a new system that detects the presence of pedestrians and automatically hits the brakes if they’re in the way.
The system combines input from camera and radar to determine the proximity and tangent of pedestrians and other please-don't-run-over objects. If the system determines a high danger of imminent collision, it warns the driver and doubles the braking power when he responds. If the driver doesn’t respond, the system applies the brakes itself.
The chip that runs the system has to process 100 billion operations per second to make it work and has an operating temperature range of -40°C
to +85°C. The first vehicle to sport the technology will be the Lexus LS460, due in showrooms later this month.
