Toronto, March 31, 2022
March 31, 2022 marked a special event for A.U.G. Signals Ltd. (AUG) – we successfully completed a 3.5 year collaborative project with our partners, York University, York Regional Police, and Ontario Good Roads Association, to develop ARGUS: Radar-based All-Weather Roadway Safety System under the Canadian Safety and Security Program (CSSP)supported by Defence Research and Development Canada’s Centre for Security Science (DRDC CSS).
Background – With millions of people on Canadian roads every day, roadway safety is a big priority for participants in road traffic and more so for first responders. At a typical scene of a road collision, the first responders such as police officers, firefighters, paramedics are among the first to arrive and provide assistance. Police officers also have responsibilities such as assisting and investigating vehicle crash, deploying and providing equipment, overseeing work zone, patrolling vehicle pullovers, and performing traffic control, etc. These tasks performed along the roadways increase the risk of vehicles hitting first responders while they are carrying out their duties.
While many factors contribute to this safety issue (weather, impaired driving, speeding) and various recommendations have been made to mitigate the risks of collision, annually significant number of first responders are killed attending to roadway emergencies, and experience near misses on a weekly basis. Nation wide police officer survey performed during the project revealed that a majority (91%) of the participants do not have access to any device or technology that detects and warns them about possible collisions a few seconds before they occur, 75% of participants would consider using a system that can warn them about oncoming dangerous traffic while they work on the sides of roads or stationery in their vehicle (inside and outside the vehicle). AUG and its partners aimed to develop ARGUS: Radar-based All-Weather Roadway Safety System addressing this gap by combining low-cost radar front-end (RFE) with advanced analytics and threat analysis to ascertain threats accurately, and alerts first responders.
Achievements – From concept to field trials, AUG and its partners have developed ARGUS and demonstrated its capability to improve the safety of the first responders by detecting and alerting the responders to the risks while they are carrying out tasks on the road and allowing them the time (>3seconds) to react and escape from the risks. This is proven by the 95% pass rate of ARGUS in all the field trial scenarios based on the accuracy and timeliness of ARGUS.
Specifically, as an affordable and portable system, ARGUS
- Accurately detects and localizes the oncoming vehicles
- Efficiently analyzes threats and foresees accidents risks and warns first responders in time (>3 seconds) to take adequate safety measures.
- Provides targeted and effective warnings to the individual responder to realize threats and take appropriate action in time.
Moving forward – ARGUS is ready to contribute to improving the roadway safety of the first responders. AUG is also actively pursuing other applications for ARGUS, such as work zone safety to expand the applicability of ARGUS and generate more benefits to the community from the project’s outcomes and beyond.
