Traffic Department

Since the first automobile was constructed more than a hundred years ago, vehicle technology has been constantly developed and optimised further. Commercial vehicles have been optimised with regard to economy and less fuel consumption, whereas passenger cars have become increasingly comfortable, safer, and more efficient. During this process of optimisation, the vehicle was regarded as an isolated item. Today, the vehicle have to be understood as part of the total system human, environment and traffic. Strict limits for noise- and pollution emissions and the increasingly dense traffic require new concepts and methods for the vehicle and the traffic of the future. These concepts and methods have to point new ways for solving the conflict between the rising need for mobility and the demand for minimum effects on our environment.

Our traffic department takes care of meeting these demands in research as well as in development. In this department, new vehicle technologies are investigated within their environment. We mainly aim at developing and analysing new systems in the field of driver assistance, collision warning and collision avoidance. New technologies are assessed with regard to the improvement of traffic safety, traffic flow and the reduction of pollution emissions.

Further, we focus attention on the analysis and testing of new vehicle systems in driving tests. For this purpose we employ our own test vehicles. By order of the automotive industry, we developed a test method, by which different sensor concepts for the measuring of distance and differential speed can be evaluated. Such sensors are employed in the „Intelligent Cruise Control“, which has already been put into series production. The test method comprises both driving tests, which are executed in flowing traffic and stationary tests being executed on our own test track. For this, special test equipment was developed, consisting of mechanical and electronic devices as well as standardised target objects used for distance measuring.

Apart from testing, simulation is a very important tool. Thus, the simulation program PELOPS has been developed in cooperation with BMW since 1990, which depicts driver and vehicle in detail. PELOPS has been employed within the frame of the European research program “Prometheus”, which is designated for the analysis and development of telematic systems. Subsequently, PELOPS was used for the evaluation of the traffic effects of driver assistance systems such as the intelligent cruise control or the brake assistant. Another focal point is the optimisation of the traffic volume. It could for instance be demonstrated, how the employing of intelligent traffic light systems, telematic vehicle technology or roadside driver influencing measures could achieve a significant increase of the traffic throughput, while simultaneously reducing pollutant emissions and accident hazard.