Škoda is developing unique technology which displays to pedestrians – via the car’s grille – when it’s safe to cross the road, as part of a wider trial scheme looking to make roads safer for children, senior citizens and people with disabilities.
Škoda is developing unique technology which displays to pedestrians – via the car’s grille – when it’s safe to cross the road, as part of a wider trial scheme looking to make roads safer for children, senior citizens and people with disabilities.
The system replaces the Enyaq iV’s backlit Crystal Face grille with a new body featuring LED strip holders. These programmable LEDs can be controlled separately, making it possible to create unique animations.
In more extreme examples, a car approaching the crossing that is unable to stop can send out a clear signal to pedestrians not to cross.
The symbols currently being tested include green arrows and a green person, plus a warning triangle or a red triangle with a cross – symbols that are widely recognisable.
Technology like this could potentially help to reduce the number of overall pedestrian injuries on the road, with more than 16,000 occurring in 2021, according to annual figures released by the Department for Transport in the UK in 2022.
Changes to the Highway Code in 2022 advises that pedestrians have priority at zebra crossings as part of a wider change with a new hierarchy of road users. Drivers should also now give way to pedestrians crossing, or waiting to cross a road they are driving into or out of. Therefore more vulnerable road users could benefit from the communications between cars and pedestrians at these locations.
Experts from the Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics at the Czech Technical University in Prague (CIIRC), the Technical University of Munich and Škoda have been working together to develop this smart assistant, alongside the signalling radiator grille.
With sensors located two metres high, it is able to see over parked cars. It then heads out into the road when it sees it’s safe to do so.
The robot displays both information for pedestrians and warnings for approaching cars – it shows approaching drivers a stop sign. It also sends a warning to the car itself, which is displayed as an animation on the infotainment display. Once the pedestrians have crossed the road, the robot goes back to the kerb.