Child Safety Driver Assistant System and its Acceptance

ABSTRACT

Farming machinery incidents frequently cause the injury and death of children on farms worldwide. The two main causes of this problem are the driver's view being restricted by construction and/or environmental factors and insufficient risk awareness by children and parents. It is difficult to separate working and living areas on family farms, and the adult supervision necessary to avoid work accidents is often lacking. For this reason, additional preventive measures are required to reduce the number of crushings. Electronic tools that deliver information about the presence of children in the blind spots surrounding vehicles and their attached machines can be very effective. Such an electronic device must cover all security gaps around operating agricultural vehicles and their attached machines, ensure collision-free stopping in risk situations, and be inexpensive. Wireless sensor network and electrical near-field electronic components are suited to the development of low-cost wireless detection devices. For reliable detection in a versatile environment, it is necessary for children to continuously wear a slumbering transponder. This means that children and adults must have a high acceptance of the device, which can be improved by easy usability, design, and service quality. The developed demonstrator achieved detection distances of up to 40 m in the far field and 2.5 m in the near field. Recognized far-field sensor detection weaknesses, determined by user-friendliness tests, are false alarms in farmyards and around buildings. The detection distance and reliability of the near-field sensor varied with the design of the attached machines' metallic components.

KEYWORDS:

• Children
• driver assistant system
• electrical near field
• sensor network
• tractors

This project was funded by the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Zeno, supported by the Sicherheitsberatung der Sozialversicherungsanstalt der Bauern, Prävention der Berufsgenossenschaft Landshut and Bundesministerium für Verkehr, Innovation und Technology, and put in practice in collaboration with the Johannes Kepler University Linz, Siemens Austria AG, I. D. Pool Design, John Deere, Alois Pöttinger Maschinenfabrik GmbH, and Linz Center of Mechatronics GmbH und Raiffeisen Ware Austria.