Continental AG has officially announced its new accelerator force feedback pedal (AFFP) – first shown by Nissan as a fuel-saving and emissions-reducing device – and said it was intended primarily to prevent rear-end collisions which account for every other accident in Germany.
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“In 2007, Germany’s federal statistical office reported as many as 104,248 ‘collisions with another vehicle that drives off, comes to a stop, stands in stopped traffic, travels up ahead or waits.’ In these collisions, 384 persons were killed and 103,864 injured. 85% of such accidents are caused by human error,” the supplier said.
The active pedal, part of Continental’s Conti Guard safety system, is claimed to be the first accelerator pedal to communicate with the driver – it can warn of hazardous situations by vibrating and generating counter pressure, prompting the driver to take his foot off the pedal and be prepared to brake.
Nissan, on the other hand, is using the new pedal technology to assist drivers to become more fuel-efficient. It claimed a world-first for its use of technology which, it claimed, could improve fuel efficiency by 5-10% and be introduced on some models as early as next year.
When the eco-pedal system is on, each time the driver steps on the accelerator, a counter push-back control mechanism is activated if the system detects excess pressure, helping to inform the driver that they could be using more fuel than required.
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By GlobalDataAn eco-driving indicator integrated into the instrument panel feeds the driver with real-time fuel consumption levels to help improve his/her driving behavior. The ECO pedal system can be turned on or off according to the driver’s preference.
Officially, Continental said only that the pedal was being used “for the first time by a major Japanese carmaker” but a spokeswoman confirmed this was Nissan, which announced the development earlier this month. She added Continental was in talks about supplying the pedal to another Japanese automaker she declined to name, as is usual with Tier One suppliers.
So why a vibrating pedal? “Visual or acoustic signals present the essential risk that the driver is distracted just at that moment, for instance while he is talking on the phone or with a passenger, and therefore does not notice the warning signal,” said Conti’s chassis & safety division’s chassis electronics segment chief Bernd Gebhart.
Hermann Winner, head of the vehicle technology department at the technical university of Darmstadt, added: “I am very pleased that the AFFP puts the haptic information channel to use. In order to cut the number of casualties even further, the measures we take to prevent head-on collisions must head into new directions. The AFFP will probably be better accepted as an unobtrusive warning system that goes unnoticed by other passengers than warning sounds.”
The mechanical core of the AFFP is an electric motor that is connected directly to the accelerator pedal and can change the pedal’s position in a 10th of a second. AFFP can be installed in any vehicle.
Accidents involving van and truck drivers in particular are most commonly caused by insufficient distance between vehicles or drowsiness, Conti noted.
The supplier claimed AFFP also helps a motorist drive more uniformly and thus more economically as fuel consumption and CO2 are reduced – this is the application adopted by Nissan.
Rival supplier TRW Automotive is also working on vibrating warning devices. At a technology show ‘n’ tell in France last June, it demonstrated a vibrating steering wheel rim fitted to a BMW 3-series sedan. This automotive equivalent of an airliner’s ‘stick shaker’ had not yet been selected for a production vehicle but discussions were under way with automakers, engineers said at the event.
