Driver assistance systems

In collaboration with the University of Koblenz-Landau, a reversing assistance system was developed to support the reversing of vehicles with trailers – based on a visual human-machine interface. The system is intended for retrofitting, irrespective of the vehicle and trailer model.
Many drivers who have no problem driving forwards with a trailer are very unsure when reversing and are therefore unable to drive the combination safely. The main reasons for this:

• When reversing, the steering movement must be mirror-inverted to the direction of travel, which can easily lead to a ‘knot in the brain’. The influence of the steering wheel movement is not reliably recognizable and predictable.
• Reversing trailers are an unstable system. If the steering wheel is turned too far, the trailer is positioned at right angles to the direction of travel due to the interrupted power axle and can only be realigned by driving forwards again.

The development goal was an assistance system that enables even inexperienced drivers to reverse safely and precisely with a rigid drawbar trailer by displaying the trajectories (routes) in the actual image of the reversing camera attached to the trailer on the mobile output device. This allows the driver to continuously check and correct the steering angle and the expected path of the trailer on the screen when reversing slowly or even when stationary.

In practice, it has been shown that this system, which was introduced in 2017, can be usefully expanded and optimized. The aim is to develop an assistance system that allows the route to be determined while avoiding obstacles as soon as reversing begins. This system, with the working title TPAS, is currently under development. You can find an overview in the navigation bar under Developments.