The 2018 Mustang and 2018 F-150 will both be able to see pedestrians in the dark and apply the brakes if people enter the path of these vehicles.
Day and night, Pedestrian Detection is designed to help identify people already in — or about to step into — the road ahead. — Gregor Allexi, Ford
“We know some drivers find hitting the road at night a stressful experience. Especially driving in towns and cities, pedestrians — sometimes distracted by mobiles — can without warning step into the road, leaving even alert drivers very little time to avoid an accident,” Gregor Allexi, active safety engineer, Ford of Europe, said. “Day and night, Pedestrian Detection is designed to help identify people already in – or about to step into – the road ahead.”
To develop the new Pedestrian Detection system, engineers worked at night, putting life-size dummies suddenly in the path of vehicles traveling on a closed course, as well as testing the system in busy metropolitan areas, like Paris and Amsterdam.
The car’s new Pedestrian Detection system (which is a more advanced version of the system detailed in the video below) briskly evaluates data from the car’s bumper-mounted radar and windshield-mounted camera and compares objects in its path against a database of pedestrian shapes to sort people from other objects, such as trees and signs. The camera captures 30 frames per second, even in low-light situations where the headlights provide the only illumination. Once a pedestrian is detected, the driver is first warned by a sound and a visual cue. If the driver doesn’t react quickly enough, the car will apply the brakes on its own.
This new technology will roll out first in the 2018 Mustang and 2018 F-150 in North America. Later this year it will arrive on the next-generation Fiesta in Europe.