Volvo to learn from locusts

Volvo has spoken today about how it is planning on using research conducted at Newcastle University in its future safety solutions.

Unusually, Volvo wants to draw inspiration from work done by Dr Claire Ring on the migratory African locust.

The research looked into why these creatures, during their migratory flight, managed to avoid bumping into each other.

Jonas Ekmark, preventive safety leader at Volvo Car Corporation, said: "Our original thoughts centred on pedestrian safety. If we could trace how the locusts are able to avoid each other maybe we could program our cars not to hit pedestrians."

During the study, Dr Rind learned that visual input is instantly transmitted to the insect's wing nerve cells, seemingly bypassing the brain.

"Locusts are quick reacting and have reliable circuits, they do their computations against lots of background chatter, much like driving around town," comments Dr Rind.

Volvo wanted to learn if locust sensory-input routing methodologies could be built into a vehicle pedestrian safety system.

The goal was to avoid hitting pedestrians. Primary to this research was to synthesise a locust algorithm that could be applied to a car.

"As it turns out, the locust processing system is much more sophisticated than the hardware/software currently available. In the end technology was no match for nature," says Mr Ekmark.

"What we learned was very encouraging. However, rather than wait for technology to catch up to Dr Rind's Locust Principle, Volvo created a pedestrian alert feature that will be introduced in the near future.

"When we started in late 2002, sensing and computational systems were rather weak. But technology is quickly catching up.

"Volvo City Safety has been launched as standard in the new Volvo XC60. At low speeds, City Safety is smart enough to bring the XC60 to a complete stop should the vehicle in front suddenly stop.

"Beyond City Safety our next step will be our first pedestrian avoidance feature," added Mr Ekmark.

"Although City Safety is not related to our Locust research, we are confident that our first pedestrian auto brake feature will be very good at taking actions to help avoid hitting pedestrians.

"While some interesting ideas came from this study, we still have many more years of research ahead to bring that small locust brain into our cars.

"We have found a lowly locust has beaten man, at least for now. Still, the big question remains: How do groups of locusts keep from bumping into each other?

"Maybe there is more to be learned? We will continue to follow interesting paths in our efforts to reach our safety vision; to design cars that do not crash," concluded Mr Ekmark.