Safety application specific requirements on the data processing of environmental sensors

At first sight, safety applications based on environmental sensors have the same data requirements as comfort applications. A closer look makes clear that there are important differences especially concerning the data processing. This paper describes the requirements of safety and comfort orientated driver assistance systems. It is shown that the data-output provided by an environmental sensor, which is for example a radar sensor, does not exactly fit to the required data-input of these applications. This gap is closed by setting up a hypothesis on the environment by use of model assumptions. The information content of data and the reliability of the information change in the curse of data processing. Here is a major difference between safety and comfort applications. A safety critical application needs very reliable data, which can only be ensured when the included model assumptions are well known and the information content of data is clearly defined. Furthermore, it is necessary to describe the reliability of all provided information.