Intelligent air bags ready for market deployment
The ability to predict and react to crash conditions in a split second could help save many lives. According with the World Health Organisation (WHO) around 1.25 million people are killed in road traffic accidents ever year, and between 20 and 50 million more people suffer non-fatal injuries. With the help of an SME Instrument Phase I grant, Spanish firm Magom has taken steps to address this unacceptable situation by applying artificial intelligence (AI) to airbags. A special valve takes into account the speed, passenger position and passenger height at the point of collision. Seat belt tension and the intensity of airbag deployment can then be automatically modified. The purpose of this specific project was to assess market viability. ‘We have contacted potential customers and three have already demonstrated their interest in the project results,’ says I-VALVE (Intelligent valve for personalized safety airbag) project coordinator Antonio Rovira from Magom, Spain. ‘This includes a market leading airbag manufacturer present in more than 20 countries.’ Safer driving The driver’s airbag has become an integral part of car design. While thousands of lives have been saved thanks to this critical advance in driver and passenger safety, airbags themselves can cause injury or even death if not properly installed or used. The I-VALVE project sought to examine the market potential of an innovative membrane that can be intelligently programmed to provide the driver or passenger with protection tailored to their needs. ‘Many innovations have been developed since the introduction of the driver’s airbag by Mercedes-Benz in 1981,’ says Rovira. ‘These include new airbag functions and sensors to achieve higher safety performances.’ I-VALVE takes this one step further by introducing AI into airbag design. ‘AI is already being used in autonomous driving applications,’ notes Rovira. ‘We saw that it could be used to activate passive safety systems in a crash or pre-crash environment, by taking into account the speed, passenger position and passenger height.’ Low-cost solution Magom’s key innovation is a silicon valve integrated into the airbag, which adapts the physical reaction of the airbag depending on the situation. ‘If the passenger is a girl weighing 30 kg for example, a normal airbag will fully deploy before she reaches it, which means that it will be far too hard when she makes impact with it,’ explains Rovira. ‘A man weighing 180 kg on the other hand will take less time to hit the airbag in a crash, so a normal airbag will often not be fully deployed in time. What our valve does is help to adjust airbag function to the real situation without sensors, software or moving parts.’ Demonstrations using the prototype airbag resulted in significantly reduced damage to crash test dummies. Another key strength of the I-VALVE innovation is that it is a low-cost solution to a significant societal and economic problem. This should help the firm to bring the innovation to market, and ensure its installation at all levels of vehicles. ‘We have set a target of reaching 6% of the worldwide niche market share of front and side airbags, and achieving an annual profit of EUR 5.4 million, three years after commercialisation starts,” says Rovira. ‘We also plan to increase our staff to 28 people and hope to enter the US market in 2022.’
Keywords
I-VALVE, MAGOM, airbag, car, vehicle, sensors, AI, artificial intelligence, SME, driving
