During the recent Airbag 2018 Symposium in Mannheim, Germany, safety device manufacturer ZF Friedrichshafen revealed a prototype external airbag system. In accordance with the company’s Vision Zero, which is dedicated to reducing the number of accidents, these external airbags act to decrease occupant injury severity in perpendicular crashes by 40%. These units serve as an extra crumple zone and absorb some of the impacts when deployed automatically during a side impact crash.
In concept and design, the external airbags are similar to the current internal airbags used in cars. However, they are approximately 80 inches long, 21 inches high and 15 inches wide. At 250 liters, the external airbag is three times the volume of a regular airbag. It will also require multiple inflators because of the increased size.
The external airbags system is predicted to be in production within the next two years but at the moment, the biggest challenge for the producers is perfecting the perpendicular crash predicting system. This involves a network of computer, cameras, sensors, and LIDAR working in tandem to accurately and precisely predict a side impact with a minimum error since an external airbag takes 100 milliseconds to be deployed and must be fully functional by the time the impact occurs.
The German company also plans to continue developing new safety devices tailored toward the latest trend of self-driving cars. Because such cars will need different types of safety systems compared to those driven by humans.