- New research projectsthey focus onsecuritybehavioral,preventionof accidentsand securitypassive
/PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE/ — Before joining Toyota’s Collaborative Safety Research Center (CSRC), Zhaonan Sun spent several years studying how the human body absorbs the force of an accident.
Today, as a senior scientist at the CSRC, he helps identify opportunities to address these issues.
Toyota’s Collaborative Safety Research Center highlights its partnerships and looks to the future with the announcement of 10 new projects: The new research projects focus on behavioral safety, accident prevention and passive safety.
Sun was a graduate student at the University of Virginia (UVA), where he studied injury biomechanics and human body modeling under the tutelage of Jason Kerrigan, director of the UVA Center for Applied Biomechanics since 2019 and a long-time CSRC collaborator. As fate would have it, the researcher with whom Sun trained is now his colleague.
“He took the time to understand the context. He really worked hard to make the project successful and took it to the highest level,” Kerrigan said of Sun’s graduate research. “I was sad to see him go, but I’m very glad he’s back, this time on the Toyota side.”
For Sun, moving from the lab to Toyota revealed something he hadn’t been able to see before.
“I wouldn’t say that working at the university is the tip of the iceberg. I would say it’s the half,” he said. “And now, it’s great to see the other half: how we leverage the results to engage with our regulators, rating agencies and road safety stakeholders to reduce the number of road fatalities.”
Sun’s journey, from UVA to Toyota, is, in many ways, the story of CSRC itself. When Toyota founded the CSRC in 2011, the company argued that investing in safety research in clinical, laboratory and university settings could generate greater benefits than keeping the work in-house. Today, having completed more than 100 studies, his work continues to improve by leaps and bounds.
Today, the CSRC announced 10 new security research projects, in collaboration with seven universities and private sector organizations, including UVA, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Michigan and Purdue University. These projects range from how adaptive interfaces can increase driver adoption of advanced safety systems, to new methods of detecting pedestrians and cyclists, to how the risk of speeding varies depending on the type of road and the difference between driver speed and established speed limits.
“The CSRC was created with the idea that the best security research is achieved when you invest in long-term relationships with the best institutions and researchers and share a commitment to publishing the results obtained,” said Jeff Makarewicz, vice president of Research and Development (R&D) of the TMNA group. “Each of these 10 new projects reflects that approach, as they contribute to developing research capabilities and institutional knowledge.”
Jason Hallman, senior manager at the CSRC, sees these 10 new projects as a continuation of what he calls a “perfectly synergistic relationship.” In short, Toyota’s engineering knowledge, related government and safety research activity, and academic expertise combine to create something no one could produce alone.
“The work we do today will lay the foundation and define the safety features that drivers can benefit from for decades to come,” Hallman said. “Every project we select is a strategic investment in that future: in even safer vehicles, improved engineering tools and results that we hope will inform the industry and policymakers.”
The central axis of much of this work isTHUMS, the Total Human Model for Safetya virtual model of the human body developed by Toyota that allows researchers to simulate accidents in a digital environment with an unprecedented level of detail.
Although they have their own limitations, computational models can run many more simulations and predict almost 100 injury types simultaneously. Sun, which collaborates with several universities in the CSRC, is at the center of that process, coordinating university researchers, Toyota engineers and safety stakeholders to put the findings into practice.
This great determination is ingrained in researchers whom the CSRC has helped train for more than 15 years, many of whom have gone on to positions in government, academia and throughout the automotive sector and, in some cases, like Sun, at Toyota itself.
“It’s very exciting to leave my mark on the future of vehicle safety,” he said. “Using human body models and performing virtual tests is one of my professional passions. I’m excited to see where the future takes us with these new projects and how we can help better protect those on the roads.”
Below are the 10 new projects.
Contributor: Massachusetts Technological Institute
Project name:Adaptive interfaces to increase ADAS adoption
Key question:How do the benefits and concerns expected by a driver influence their decision to use advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) in different situations?
Approach:Drivers will watch various narrative-driven driving videos and report on the effort, value, risk, and probability they perceive when using specific ADAS features.
Contributor: Purdue University/Ohio State University
Project name:Naturalistic detection of vulnerable road users (VRU) with micro-Doppler radar
Key question:How can signals from current radar sensors and new AI models improve VRU detection for future qualification evaluations?
Approach:Researchers will collect real-world radar data from current automotive sensors and use it to develop new AI algorithms that can more quickly detect and distinguish between pedestrians, cyclists and other vulnerable road users.
Contributor: Touchstone Evaluations, Inc.
Project name:Consequences of accidents related to excess speed depending on the type of road and the context
Key question:What are the risks of injuries and deaths from speeding based on the posted speed limit and the speed difference?
Approach:Researchers will analyze accident data to evaluate how the risk of injury and death varies depending on the type of road, the posted speed limit, and the difference in speed from the limit.
Contributor: Touchstone Evaluations, Inc.
Project name:Effects of compliance with speed limits on surrounding vehicles
Key question:How does a driver’s speed affect the behavior of surrounding traffic?
Approach:Researchers will analyze real-world driving data to quantify how a driver’s speed, compared to surrounding traffic, affects the behavior of nearby vehicles.
Contributor: University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI)
Project name:Parametric studies with human body models (HBM) of different sizes and shapes
Key question:How to deal with different HBMs to align virtual test results across OEMs and regions?
Approach:Researchers will conduct virtual crash testing using three widely available HBMs, with standard and modified geometries, to identify ways to align results across automakers and regions.
Contributor: University of Michigan-Dearborn/UMTRI
Project name:Security Benefits of Vehicle-to-Network (V2N) Communication for Early Assistance
Key question:How can V2N communication be best used to increase driver safety?
Approach:Researchers will leverage international efforts and U.S.-specific driving and accident records to identify where vehicle-to-grid communication can provide drivers with earlier warning of potential dangers ahead.
Contributor: University of Virginia
Project name:Sensitivity of virtual testing to human body model (HBM) updates
Key question:What are the effects of small changes in HBMs on injury metrics and virtual testing results?
Approach:Researchers will create an automated simulation framework to evaluate how small version updates to virtual human body models affect injury predictions in hypothetical accident situations.
Contributor: University of Virginia
Project name:Foot posture and its implications for predicting ankle injury risk
Key question:What are the expected effects of various footwell geometries and positioning on ankle injury risks?
Approach:Researchers will collect measurements from the vehicle interior and perform computer simulations to understand how different foot positions and different footwell designs affect the risk of ankle injuries in the event of a crash.
Contributor: University of Virginia
Project name:Predicting Lumbar Spine Injuries Using Accident Test Dummies
Key question:How to predict the risk of lumbar spine injuries in upright and reclined sitting positions from the values provided by different mannequins?
Approach:Researchers will perform crash simulations to develop a method to convert lower back injury data from crash test dummies into injury risk predictions for real occupants.
Collaborator: University ofWisconsin-Madison
Project name:Strategies to mitigate the annoyance caused by alerts and improve interaction
Key question:Do the characteristics of the alert source influence the driver’s level of annoyance?
Approach:Volunteers will complete surveys and interviews based on hypothetical situations to evaluate how different types of alerts and their origin affect driver annoyance and use of safety and convenience features.
About Toyota
Toyota (NYSE:TM) has been part of the cultural fabric of North America for nearly 70 years and we are committed to advancing next-generation sustainable mobility through our Toyota and Lexus brands, as well as our more than 1,800 dealerships.
Toyota directly employs nearly 64,000 people in North America who have contributed to the design, engineering and assembly of more than 50 million cars and trucks at our 14 manufacturing plants. In 2025, Toyota’s North Carolina plant began assembling automotive batteries for electric vehicles.
For more information about Toyota, visitwww.ToyotaNewsroom.com.
About TMNA R&D
For more than 50 years, Toyota R&D groups in North America have been involved in project design for several of the best-selling Toyota vehicles on American roads. Today, teams are creating both next-generation vehicles and new, advanced mobility concepts that can better move people, goods and information. Headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Toyota R&D groups in North America pursue Toyota’s mission to “Produce Happiness for All” that makes life safer, easier and more enjoyable.
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