NUP-REPORT 1.0: A Proposed Reporting and Benchmarking Framework for Non-Upright Pedestrian Detection and Pre-Crash Safety Evaluation

Abstract

Highlights What are the main findings? NUP-REPORT 1.0 proposes six reporting domains and a 30-item checklist comprising 23 core items (19 universal and four component-contingent) and seven conditional items for non-upright pedestrian sensing and pre-crash evaluation. A purposive 20-publication feasibility audit illustrates practical use of the checklist and documents sample-specific omissions in orientation, timing, calibration, and independent-unit uncertainty reporting. What are the implications of the main findings? The framework makes applicability, tested and untested scenario coverage, and temporal reference points explicit, improving reproducibility without converting checklist completion into a quality or safety score. Version 1.0 is a provisional, testable proposal that requires external consensus, inter-laboratory evaluation, and future updating before it could be treated as a validated reporting standard. Abstract Pedestrian-detection research and pre-crash safety assessment predominantly represent upright pedestrians, although prone, supine, lateral, seated, crouched, kneeling, partially collapsed, and fall-transition states alter target geometry, visibility, sensor signatures, and intervention time. Cross-study comparison is further limited by inconsistent posture labels, data provenance, latency boundaries, uncertainty reporting, and vehicle-response assumptions. We developed NUP-REPORT 1.0 as a provisional reporting and benchmarking framework through a structured narrative synthesis of a 45-source derivation corpus covering epidemiology, sensing benchmarks, uncertainty and assurance methods, reporting-guideline methodology, and public safety protocols. A reconstructed decision ledger documented 46 candidate concepts: 30 were retained as checklist items, 10 were assigned to an extended descriptor set, and six were merged. Each retained item was mapped to supporting evidence and classified as universal core (n = 19), component-contingent core (n = 4), or conditional (n = 7). The framework comprises six domains, a scenario-coverage matrix, five non-overlapping event timestamps, detection-referenced stopping equations, and a 30-item checklist. A purposive feasibility audit of 20 publications, including the adjacent pedestrian-detection literature not designed specifically for non-upright evaluation, illustrated checklist use. Within this sample, target orientation and static-versus-transition state were each reported explicitly in five of 20 publications (25%); none of the 17 applicable papers reported both time-to-first-detection and detection distance, none evaluated confidence calibration, and none of the 20 reported independent-unit uncertainty intervals. Vehicle-response items were non-applicable to papers making no intervention claim. These observations are sample-specific and do not estimate field-wide reporting prevalence. NUP-REPORT is not a consensus standard, certification procedure, or safety score; it is a traceable Version 1.0 proposal for study design, retrospective audit, and stakeholder refinement.