Continental can already look back to a long history in Southern America. Currently, we have 32 locations in seven different countries in total: Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Ecuador, Chile, Colombia and Peru. The operation in Brazil started in 1959 in the Guarulhos plant (city of São Paulo). While Continental has been already active in Brazil for decades, the main impulse for Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt (THI) to expand its network to Brazil through AWARE came especially through its research and test center CARISSMA. It should be mentioned here that the German-Brazilian network of THI is not a unilateral engagement, but a transfer of technology and knowledge in both directions. Around five years ago, the Brazilian universities UNICAMP (Campinas, São Paulo State) and Federal University of Paraná (UFPR) conducted a cooperative project with THI, which was dealing with the detection of drivers’ attention in diverse distraction scenarios. For the implementation of a corresponding study with test persons (attention analysis) a hazardous Brazilian coastal road was reconstructed. Thereby, the Brazilian competences on traffic psychology and the German engineering expertise perfectly complemented each other. Based on this experience, Continental started a new follow-up project with a further partner from the industry, which is supervised again by a German-Brazilian research group at THI. All parties involved see the international cooperation AWARE likewise as enrichment for both economy and science.
Dr.-Ing. Lutz Kühnke
Head of Occupant Safety & Inertial Sensors Segment, Passive Safety & Sensorics Business Unit, Chassis & Safety Division