Humanetics Launches Stealth Robot for Testing ADAS Vehicle Safety Features to Protect Pedestrians

Humanetics is excited to announce our newest product: the UFOnano, an Ultra-Flat Overrunable (UFO) robot platform – even smaller than the UFOmini – making it the perfect low-maintenance, compact ADAS safety device to run fully autonomous pedestrian and collision mitigation testing.

Pedestrians and cyclists are two very vulnerable road user groups that need special safety-related attention. As future roads become occupied by autonomous vehicles, it is the safety industry’s goal to continuously make roads safer for all road users. Humanetics is committed to producing products that improve active safety testing for both vehicle occupants and pedestrians alike.

Existing tools of this nature on the market were too big, for example, to execute shoulder-to-shoulder testing. This created a strong demand for a compact testing solution. Our desire was to deliver a product with the distinctive Humanetics standard for accuracy that can be used for VRU testing and meet the market need for more realistic test scenarios and pedestrian behavior.

The UFOnano can drive a curve in every radius and even ‘turn on the spot’

for more representative real-life test scenarios mimicking true-to-life pedestrian behavior. With its compact and functional design, it is also perfect for pedestrian ‘swarm testing’- where five or more vehicles are tested simultaneously. Its simple and reliable design allows maximum flexibility under diverse scenarios as it is small enough for swarm testing with its very low profile, but also offers extreme stability, exceptionally high accuracy using an integrated RTK-GPS system, and of course, is overrunable.

The UFOnano platform is also fully integrated into the Humanetics UFO base control environment for complex testing using up to nine robots from the Humanetics family. It is designed for commonly-used VRU dummies as well as for the next generation of highly sophisticated human replicas. And as with all our active safety products, we’ve integrated swappable batteries to guarantee no downtime at the proving ground.

And finally, the modern, robust stealth surface of the UFOnano provides a clear advantage because of its sleek material characteristics. Unlike other surfaces, the UFOnano’s stealth design makes it invisible to vehicle radar, a necessity for our customers and their realistic test conditions.

Markus Schmidl, Humanetics’ Global Director of Active Safety Sales sums it up, “We are very proud of the UFOnano as the newest addition to our Humanetics product portfolio. We started in the active safety business more than 10 years ago when we were approached by a client to develop a platform that a test car could run over without damage. So, we created an ultra-flat overrunable robot for active safety testing, which is now known as the UFOpro and used by many Euro NCAP labs, TIER1s and car manufacturers all over the world. We are convinced that this new UFOnano robotic platform will further help us to improve road safety for vulnerable road users and bring us one step closer to protecting human potential.”

For more information visit our website at https://humanetics.humaneticsgroup.com/ or reach out to our contact below.

About Humanetics

For over 65 years, Humanetics has been the leading global market designer, manufacturer and supplier of crash test dummies and calibration equipment, crash sensors and instrumentation, active safety testing equipment and services for autonomous vehicles and crash simulation software models.

Humanetics serves industry leaders in a variety of high-growth markets including automotive, aviation, energy, medical, military and civil infrastructure. In the automotive sector alone, Humanetics serves 100% of the OEMs and Tier I safety suppliers worldwide. Humanetics has over 800 employees across 22 facilities strategically located around the world with its global corporate headquarters located in Farmington Hills, Michigan, USA.