Abstract
The rapid growth of Electric Vehicles (EVs) and Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs) has provoked mounting concern that the relative silence of EVs will result in an increased risk to pedestrian safety. The prevailing solution to this concern is to add an artificial sound to EVs to aid their detection by pedestrians and other vulnerable road users.
eVADER (electric Vehicle Alert for Detection and Emergency Response) is a European Commission, part funded, project in which a consortium, including academic institutions, OEM’s and tier one suppliers, is studying a next-generation audible alert system solution for EVs and HEVs. A prime objective of eVADER is to develop a solution whereby the audible alert system will have minimal impact on environmental noise levels whilst satisfying the requirement of alerting pedestrians to the proximity of an EV / HEV for their safety.
This paper summarises the early investigation work of eVADER by outlining the key findings of studies into the psychoacoustics of alert sounds. The eVADER pedestrian alert system concept is described together with its many sub-systems such as: the on-board pedestrian detection system, the risk estimation strategy and the beamforming loudspeaker array. Additionally the practical installation of the complete system into a Nissan LEAF demonstrator car is described together with initial results of the loudspeaker beamforming array sub-system performance.
KEYWORDS – Electric, Vehicle, Pedestrian, Alert, Detection, EV, Sound