Development of the First Near Obstacle Detection Systems
Written by Ronald W. Cox
The General Motors public relations department in 1983 engineered the corporation's first sponsorship of a television program. It was a big one: a dramatization of the life of George Washington, a three-night miniseries on the CBS-TV network. While various divisions have sponsored shows, the corporate parent had never undertaken such a project. A total of 48 minutes of advertising during the three nights was spread among the various divisions and the corporation. One of the corporate ads shown in this GM first was an advertisement about work the corporation was doing to protect a driver from running over things in the blind spots when backing up. The ad, aired in the spring of 1984, showed a car equipped with an object detector that could see a small tricycle parked behind the car. Delco Electronics, at the time, was developing experimental Near Obstacle Detection Systems (NODS) for vehicles with poor rear visibility.
Our first prototype systems in 1984 used Polaroid Camera acoustic focus sensors that clicked and listened for a return signal. The time delay told us how far the obstacle was from the rear bumper.
In 1988, a Near Obstacle Detection System was developed at Delco Systems Operations in Goleta, California as a vehicle safety system that would detect and warn the driver of objects that were in the driver's blind zone in the moving vehicle back-up and adjacent lane. Work in this area required concept development and operational demonstration. With the aid of Hughes Santa Barbara Research Corp. (SBRC), a detection technology study was conducted that included radar (>40GHz), infrared lasers, and ultrasound. Testing these three technologies was conducted at DSO, GM Research, and SBRC. The conclusion, from this preliminary work, was that the radar approach was clearly superior over the other two for the reasons of immunity to the outside environments of rain, ice, snow, and dirt. Included in this decision was the current basic development work on the Micro Microwave Integrated Circuit (MMIC) using Gallium-Arsenide. This effort was in process at several integrated circuit companies and was potentially a very cost effective technology for future high volume production.
The concept development design included a discrete 40GHz FM-CW radar and the associated electronic interfaces. The warning output was a loud beep and a flashing red light in the rearview mirror. A vehicle was modified and considerable performance testing including the sensitivity to adverse environments e.g. ice and street dirt.
The software design was very straight forward and was located in the vehicle body computer. All of the concept development objectives and the vehicle tests were very successful. There also were a number of demonstrations to GM and Delco Electronics technical personnel.
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