Volvo announced that it is developing a car technology that can detect and avoid kangaroos. The Swedish car maker began testing the prototype Thursday in Australia, where 20,000 vehicular accidents involve kangaroo collisions every year.
"Whereas Volvo Cars' Pedestrian Detection technology is geared towards city driving, our kangaroo detection research is focusing on highway speed situations," Martin Magnusson, Senior Safety Engineer at Volvo Cars, said in an official statement. "This type of technology is not designed to take responsibility away from drivers. If the driver is inattentive, the car will warn him or her and eventually intervene with hard braking to avoid a potential collision."
At the heart of the kangaroo avoidance technology is a combination of radar and light-sensitive camera sensors that scan the road for moving objects like animals and vehicles. The data is fed to a computer system that can process 15 images per second and then react to an emergency faster in half the time of a human, Stuff reported. An attentive driver can detect danger and apply the brakes within 1.2 seconds whereas the Volvo system can do it in 0.0.5 seconds.
The kangaroo avoidance technology builds on an existing system outfitted in Volvo cars in Sweden today, according to the Telegraph. Volvo is currently modifying its algorithms as it is designed for smaller animals such as reindeer and cows.
"Kangaroos are very unpredictable animals and difficult to avoid, but we are confident we can refine our technology to detect them and avoid collisions on the highway," Magnusson said.
