Volvo has been studying the African Locust in connection with the development of new types of pedestrian safety technology.

They intend to see if the locust’s sensory-input routing methodologies can be applied to a vehicle’s pedestrian safety system, with the primary goal of avoiding collisions with pedestrians.

Volvo has worked with Newcastle University on the project and research undertaken by Dr. Claire Rind at the University has revealed that the migratory African Locust naturally tend to avoid collisions during flight.

According to the research, this is achieved when the locust’s visual input bypasses its brain and is automatically transmitted to the insect’s wing cells.

"Locusts are quick reacting and have reliable circuits, they do their computations against lots of background chatter, much like driving around town," commented Dr. Rind.

Central to the research was the plan to synthesise a locust algorithm that could be applied to a car’s in built safety features, however the processing system used by the locust has been found too sophisticated for the hardware and software currently available.

Volvo’s City Safe technology in the XC60 series is designed to bring the car to a complete stop at low speeds if the vehicle in front should stop suddenly.

"Although City Safety is not related to our Locust research, we are confident that our first pedestrian auto brake feature will be very good at taking actions to help avoid hitting pedestrians," said Jonas Ekmark, preventive safety leader at Volvo.

"What we learned was very encouraging,” says Ekmark. “However, rather than wait for technology to catch up to Dr. Rind's Locust Principle, Volvo created a pedestrian alert feature that will be introduced in the near future.”