The White Paper on EU Transport Policy for 2010 states a key objective: 50% reduction of casualties due to road accidents by the end of 2010. Improvements on road safety are achievable increasing the EU market penetration of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), currently limited by performance and cost of sensor technologies.According to ICT-2007.6.1, ADOSE addresses research challenges in the area of 'accident prevention through improved...sensing including sensor fusion and sensor networks'. Besides, focus is on 'increased performance, reliable and secure operation' for 'new generation advanced driver assistance systems'.ADOSE project aims at enhancing ADAS functions through the development of high performance and low lost technologies suitable for reliable detection and classification of road users in hostile environments.The specific objectives of ADOSE are: a) five sensing technologies (FIR imager, multifunctional CMOS and 3D ranging cameras, harmonic radar/tags and silicon retina stereo sensors); b) 'technology-dependent' pre-processing algorithms; c) assessment of the sensor prototypes on functional demonstrators; d) synergies and complementary actions with on-going and new projects in FP7 on road safety.The innovations claimed are: a) low-cost FIR optics and imager combined to multispectral (NIR plus VIS) CMOS sensor for reliable pedestrian's detection at night; b) multifunctional integration on a single enhanced high resolution CMOS imager; c) harmonic radars with passive and active tags for reliable localisation and identification of vulnerable road users; d) 3D packaging technology in TOF ranging cameras improving resolution and distance accuracy; e) bio-inspired silicon retina stereo sensors addressing time critical decision applications; f) low-cost process and packaging technologies for thermal detectors, CMOS-based cameras and tags.