Development On Automatic Vehicle Speed Control Using Radio Frequency Technology

Reducing the rate of occurrence of road accidents is a big challenge to traffic officials and road users in various parts of the world.  These accidents mainly result from the behavior of the driver in respect to speed control while driving.  Most drivers drive vehicles at high speed even in speed limited areas and under undesirable traffic conditions without considering the safety of the public. While it is not practical to monitor all parts of the road throughout the time, it is not also possible for the traffic police to control the drivers with full effect.  The advancement in wireless sensor technology has made it possible to develop autonomous in-vehicle systems capable of effectively restricting over speeding in various traffic and road conditions. Thus, in this project, a model was proposed and developed for the control of vehicle speed system using fuzzy logic inference system in conjunction with the radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. The application of the proposed model to various road conditions and speed limits were simulated and observed using Matlab simulink toolbox. The results from the simulation showed an improvement in the vehicle speed control by over 51.4% compared to a conventional PID based vehicle speed control system

Development of a Microcontroller Based Car Speed Controller

Nigeria and many countries of the world have been experiencing an increase in road traffic accidents much of which can be attributed to human errors such as over speeding. The car speed controller discussed in this work is designed to automatically control the speed of a car so that the car’s speed will not exceed the speed limit that has been set for a particular zone by a regulating body such as the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) in Nigeria. The car speed controller operates by taking inputs from a set of three switches that can set speed limits in kilometers per hour of 40, 80, and 120 respectively. Each setting of the switch is compared with the actual speed of the car that is derived from the car’s speedometer. If the speed of the car exceeds the setting, an actuator is called into operation such that the car’s speed is not allowed to exceed the set limit for the zone. A microcontroller was programmed to take inputs from the switches and the speedometer; depending on the settings the microcontroller turns on light emitting diodes (LEDs) and displays appropriate messages on the screen of a liquid crystal display (LCD). In the simulation model a stepper motor was controlled by the microcontroller through a motor driver to represent the adjustment of speed in the real environment. The program for the microcontroller was written using mikroC development environment and hardware simulation was carried out with the aid of Proteus Design Suite Version 8.0. The speed settings for a zone can be altered to suite the choice of a regulatory agency. The installation of the car speed controller in vehicles will not only give early warnings to drivers but will prevent over speeding thus leading to the reduction in cases of road traffic accidents. Keywords: Car Speed Control, Speed Governor, Microcontroller, Road Safet

RFID-Based Vehicle Positioning and Its Applications in Connected Vehicles

This paper proposed an RFID-based vehicle positioning approach to facilitate connected vehicles applications. When a vehicle passes over an RFID tag, the vehicle position is given by the accurate position stored in the tag. At locations without RFID coverage, the vehicle position is estimated from the most recent tag location using a kinematics integration algorithm till updates from the next tag. The accuracy of RFID positioning is verified empirically in two independent ways with one using radar and the other a photoelectric switch. The former is designed to verify whether the dynamic position obtained from RFID tags matches the position measured by radar that is regarded as accurate. The latter aims to verify whether the position estimated from the kinematics integration matches the position obtained from RFID tags. Both means supports the accuracy of RFID-based positioning. As a supplement to GPS which suffers from issues such as inaccuracy and loss of signal, RFID positioning is promising in facilitating connected vehicles applications. Two conceptual applications are provided here with one in vehicle operational control and the other in Level IV intersection control

Cooperative controllers for highways based on human experience

The AUTOPIA program has been working on the development of intelligent autonomous vehicles for the last 10 years. Its latest advances have focused on the development of cooperative manœuvres based on communications involving several vehicles. However, so far, these manœuvres have been tested only on private tracks that emulate urban environments. The first experiments with autonomous vehicles on real highways, in the framework of the grand cooperative driving challenge (GCDC) where several vehicles had to cooperate in order to perform cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC), are described. In this context, the main challenge was to translate, through fuzzy controllers, human driver experience to these scenarios. This communication describes the experiences deriving from this competition, specifically that concerning the controller and the system implemented in a Citröen C3

Research and development of an intelligent AGV-based material handling system for industrial applications

The use of autonomous robots in industrial applications is growing in popularity and possesses the following advantages: cost effectiveness, job efficiency and safety aspects. Despite the advantages, the major drawback to using autonomous robots is the cost involved to acquire such robots. It is the aim of GMSA to develop a low cost AGV capable of performing material handling in an industrial environment. Collective autonomous robots are often used to perform tasks, that is, more than one working together to achieve a common goal. The intelligent controller, responsible for establishing coordination between the individual robots, plays a key role in managing the tasks of each robot to achieve the common goal. This dissertation addresses the development of an AGV capable of such functionality. Key research areas include: the development of an autonomous coupling system, integration of key safety devices and the development of an intelligent control strategy that can be used to govern the operation of multiple AGVs in an area