When you think of kangaroos, you probably think of Australia. While many outsiders probably regard the animals as being cute and uniquely Australian, those living in Australia might beg to differ. This is because over in Australia, one of the most common causes of car collisions in the country is due to kangaroos who might suddenly hop out onto the road.
This tends to happen in the less urban areas where if you have been to Australia, you will notice signboards warning you. In fact according to insurance claims, as much as $75 million has been claimed due to kangaroo-related accidents. So much so that Volvo, in an attempt to offer localized services/features to the Australian market, has announced that they are developing kangaroo avoidance technology.
The end result will be radars and cameras that will be built into their cars to help detect kangaroos, and also to automatically apply the brakes to prevent potential accidents and injury to both the occupants of the car and the animal.
According to Martin Magnusson, Senior Safety Engineer at Volvo Cars, “Whereas Volvo Cars’ Pedestrian Detection technology is geared towards city driving, our kangaroo detection research is focusing on highway speed situations. 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.”
Volvo already has systems in place in Sweden where instead of kangaroos, drivers will face other animals like moose, reindeer, and cows. However Magnusson cites the faster and more erratic behavior of kangaroos as the reason why this new system needs to be calibrated based around that.
In the meantime, Google’s self-driving cars have recently been upgraded to better detect children so as to be more careful around them.
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