Tokyo – Honda Motor Company’s newly released N-WGN tall wagon-type light car has an automatic brake that detects pedestrians at night under conditions where there are no street lamps.
“It supports the latest standards of Japan’s automotive assessment (JNCAP),” Honda said in a statement.
In fiscal 2019, Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) and National Agency for Automotive Safety & Victims’ Aid (NASVA) introduced a performance test targeted at nighttime pedestrians under conditions where there are no street lamps, as a new evaluation item for automatic brakes. The new N-WGN is the first vehicle that was announced to support the performance test.
All the models of the new N-WGN come with Honda’s “Honda Sensing” preventive safety system. Its automatic brake (a main function of the system) detects nighttime pedestrians with a monocular camera attached to the inner side of the upper part of the windshield. The monocular camera is a product of Robert Bosch GmbH.
The automatic brake using Bosch’s monocular camera achieved a good result in the latest test (fiscal 2018) of JNCAP conducted under conditions where there are street lamps. By making the camera work in conjunction with a headlight equipped with an automatic high beam function, Honda enabled to detect nighttime pedestrians under conditions where there are no street lamps.
“We did not change the hardware or software of the camera,” the company said.
The latest camera of Bosch, which was employed for the new N-WGN, is already used as a sensor for the automatic brakes of Honda’s N-VAN light car and “Insight” midsize sedan.
Those vehicles are also equipped with a headlight having an automatic high beam function. The automatic brakes of those vehicles, which use the same monocular camera as the N-WGN, might be able to support nighttime pedestrians under conditions where there are no street lamps.
