Advanced Driver Assistance System explained with all its features and does it really help the driver?

WHAT IS ADAS?

Advanced Driver Assistance system or ADAS is a technology which uses cameras, sensors, radar to detect the surrounding environment that will help the driver in parking and safety features that will protect both the driver and pedestrians.  

Even if the driver is professionally in driving the car can sometimes fail in tackling certain situations, For that reason ADAS kicks-in. ADAS will help out in reducing road accidents, minimize human error etc. ADAS takes use of sensors and cameras to understand the situation or what's going around the car and based upon that it notifies the user or take action on its own. It makes use of radars, image processing, computer vision, artificial intelligence to under the situation. 

WORKING OF ADAS:

As said ADAS uses various sensors to understand the surroundings of car. Multiple radars are used to determine outside situation, 

Cameras:

Cameras are used to capture what's happening around the car, then using image processing the system analyses the data that is been provided by the camera i.e. helping driver in parking, blind spot monitoring, recognizing the traffic signal, monitoring the lanes. 

Lidar:

Most important sensor in ADAS. Lidar works with cameras and sensors. Imagine you are driving your car at certain speed and the person ahead you applies brakes suddenly or someone walks in front of your car, you make go blank or apply brakes bit late. For this situations Lidar makes your life easy. Lidar keeps track on what's happening in front of your car. It does calculations and processing objects in front of your car. Based upon that it applies brakes automatically.

Ultrasonic sensor:

Helps driver in difficult parking situations. It detects the parking lines and with the help of sensors and cameras it controls the ECU of the car to move automatically. Park assists function is what is does, controls steering, brakes and accelerator when required. 

Long/Medium range Radars: 

Long range Radars are used tracking the speed of front moving vehicle. Suppose a car in front of you is moving at 80kmph and you are behind moving at 90kmph and you enable cruise control and you take off your foot from brake and accelerator. But this Radar will keep track of all this and if the person ahead you slows down to 70kmph then your car will slow down and stick to 70kmph. This is know as adaptive cruise control. 

Medium range Radar helps in rear collision, detect objects/cars in blind spot. 

TYPES OF ADAS:

Passive ADAS:

In certain conditions if Radars detect the something wrong is gonna happen by driver's mistake. In those situations system sends alerts, make sounds that will keep the driver alert while driving. It will not interfere, it will give warnings to the driver. For example if you have turned on lane keep assists and you take off your hands from the steering wheel in that condition system will alert by saying keep hands on the steering wheel. Some passive ADAS functions,

Blind spot detector: if any car is within the blind spot of driver's view then driver will be notified that a car is approaching from your blind spot. 

Park assist: Uses sensors to detect distance from the object and the car, makes sound depending how close your car is far from the object, basically to avoid collision.

Traction Control: In off-road conditions system used ABS and ESC to control wheel rotation so that car doesn't lose traction and get out of control. 

Lane keep assist: Alerts driver that your car is getting out of the lane.

Speed alert: Flashes warning if driver surpasses speed limit. 

Active ADAS:
Passive ADAS alerts the driver to take action but in active ADAS system takes action if it feels something is gonna happen. Active ADAS functions,

Lane keep assist: Automatically tracks lanes and will keep the car in particular lane without driver intervention. 

Emergency braking: System will apply brakes automatically if it senses something is ahead of the car.

Self Park: Automatically finds a parking slot and parks the car on its own without driver intervention. 

Adaptive Cruise control: Matches the speed with front moving vehicle by keeping a safe distance between both the cars. 

High beam assist: Changes from high beam to low beam if it detects that vehicles are approaching in opposite lane so that the lights don't blind the approaching traffic. 

ADAS LEVELS:

ADAS contain 5 levels of safety tech, all are divided on the basis of features. 

Level 0: The particular car doesn't have any ADAS functions but has some safety features like parking sensors and camera with guidelines. 

Level 1: Here driver will control everything but system will alert in some condition to avoid accident. Only one of the active ADAS function will work at a time and will perform the action. Level 1 includes emergency braking, adaptive cruise control and lane keep assist.

Level 2: It is similar to level 1 but here driver intervention is less and one or more functions can work simultaneously. Driver can rely on some of functions like obstacle avoidance, highway assist, auto parking. 

Level 3 to 5: These levels are used in limited numbers and still many companies are testing it. Here car can run on its own and control the car with the Auto pilot features. Still it is not available for general use but some cars of Tesla have Auto pilot feature. 

CARS THAT COME WITH ADAS IN INDIA:

Only 3 cars come with ADAS in India, MG Astor, MG Gloster and Mahindra XUV 700. 

MG Gloster is expensive among all 3 and it is the first car to be sold with ADAS in India. It packs level 1 ADAS functions. 

MG Astor and Mahindra XUV700 come with level 2 ADAS features. Astor and XUV700 ADAS functions will work without driver intervention and all the functions will operate at the same time to protect driver and pedestrians.

DOES IT REALLY HELP THE DRIVER?

The answer is YES!, this ADAS functions will help both the driver and its surroundings from getting into trouble. ADAS function can also save some ones life in certain situation, though some ADAS functions will work if the infrastructure is suitable, for example lane keep assists, it will only work if there are lanes on the road otherwise it will fail. In India some people drive their vehicles in rash manner in those conditions system will take lot of time to understand the environment. But that can be solved when more people will buy ADAS enabled cars in future. 

Totally depending upon these systems is illegal, people in America and Europe are misusing these function which can be risky sometimes. These features are brought into the market for only emergency purpose and not for driver's comfort. ADAS is brought for the safety of passengers and pedestrians so we should keep this in mind and use them accordingly.