Feasibility of an anticipatory noncontact precrash restraint actuation system

The problem of providing an electronic warning of an impending crash to a precrash restraint system a fraction of a second before physical contact differs from more widely explored problems, such as providing several seconds of crash warning to a driver. One approach to precrash restraint sensing is to apply anticipatory system theory. This consists of nested simplified models of the system to be controlled and of the system`s environment. It requires sensory information to describe the ``current state`` of the system and the environment. The models use the sensory data to make a faster-than-real-time prediction about the near future. Anticipation theory is well founded but rarely used. A major problem is to extract real-time current-state information from inexpensive sensors. Providing current-state information to the nested models is the weakest element of the system. Therefore, sensors and real-time processing of sensor signals command the most attention in an assessment of system feasibility. This paper describes problem definition, potential ``showstoppers,`` and ways to overcome them. It includes experiments showing that inexpensive radar is a practical sensing element. It considers fast and inexpensive algorithms to extract information from sensor data