Safety risk sources of autonomous mobile machines

Autonomous mobile machines are applied increasingly often in outdoor applications, but only in places, where logistic problems and safety issues are resolvable. Solving safety issues require good hazard identification and risk estimation. The aim of this study is to show which new risks emerge in autonomous mobile machines compared to manual machines. There are new risks, which are valid only in autonomous mobile machines (e.g., related to sensors for situational awareness), and risks, which exist in both machine types, but human presence can make the difference in resolving the situation. Humans can take sophisticated protective measures during an unexpected hazardous situation. Another aim of this work is to give information to designers and assessors to consider risks of their own design. Autonomous mobile machines are complex, and their performance is not always easily predictable. A checklist of risks would help an assessor, but currently, it may be difficult to find a checklist for a specific autonomous mobile machine. The main result of this study is a checklist of new risk sources or hazards of autonomous mobile machines.<br/

Advances in Mechanical Systems Dynamics 2020

The fundamentals of mechanical system dynamics were established before the beginning of the industrial era. The 18th century was a very important time for science and was characterized by the development of classical mechanics. This development progressed in the 19th century, and new, important applications related to industrialization were found and studied. The development of computers in the 20th century revolutionized mechanical system dynamics owing to the development of numerical simulation. We are now in the presence of the fourth industrial revolution. Mechanical systems are increasingly integrated with electrical, fluidic, and electronic systems, and the industrial environment has become characterized by the cyber-physical systems of industry 4.0. Within this framework, the status-of-the-art has become represented by integrated mechanical systems and supported by accurate dynamic models able to predict their dynamic behavior. Therefore, mechanical systems dynamics will play a central role in forthcoming years. This Special Issue aims to disseminate the latest research findings and ideas in the field of mechanical systems dynamics, with particular emphasis on novel trends and applications

Driving Big Data – Integration and Synchronization of Data Sources for Artificial Intelligence Applications with the Example of Truck Driver Work Stress and Strain Analysis

This paper contributes to the issue of big data analysis and data quality with the specific field of time synchronization. As a highly relevant use case, big data analysis of work stress and strain factors for driving professions is outlined. Drivers experience work stress and strain due to trends like traffic congestion, time pressure or worsening work conditions. Although a large professional group with 2.5 million (US) and 3.5 million (EU) truck drivers, scientific analysis of work stress and strain factors is scarce. Driver shortage is growing into a large-scale economic and societal challenge, especially for small businesses. Empirical investigations require big data approaches with sources like physiological and truck, traffic, weather, planning or accident data. For such challenges, accurate data is required, especially regarding time synchronization. Awareness among researchers and practitioners is key and first solution approaches are provided, connecting to many further Machine Learning and big data applications

A Voice and Pointing Gesture Interaction System for Supporting Human Spontaneous Decisions in Autonomous Cars

Autonomous cars are expected to improve road safety, traffic and mobility. It is projected that in the next 20-30 years fully autonomous vehicles will be on the market. The advancement on the research and development of this technology will allow the disengagement of humans from the driving task, which will be responsibility of the vehicle intelligence. In this scenario new vehicle interior designs are proposed, enabling more flexible human vehicle interactions inside them. In addition, as some important stakeholders propose, control elements such as the steering wheel and accelerator and brake pedals may not be needed any longer. However, this user control disengagement is one of the main issues related with the user acceptance of this technology. Users do not seem to be comfortable with the idea of giving all the decision power to the vehicle. In addition, there can be location awareness situations where the user makes a spontaneous decision and requires some type of vehicle control. Such is the case of stopping at a particular point of interest or taking a detour in the pre-calculated autonomous route of the car. Vehicle manufacturers\u27 maintain the steering wheel as a control element, allowing the driver to take over the vehicle if needed or wanted. This causes a constraint in the previously mentioned human vehicle interaction flexibility. Thus, there is an unsolved dilemma between providing users enough control over the autonomous vehicle and route so they can make spontaneous decision, and interaction flexibility inside the car. This dissertation proposes the use of a voice and pointing gesture human vehicle interaction system to solve this dilemma. Voice and pointing gestures have been identified as natural interaction techniques to guide and command mobile robots, potentially providing the needed user control over the car. On the other hand, they can be executed anywhere inside the vehicle, enabling interaction flexibility. The objective of this dissertation is to provide a strategy to support this system. For this, a method based on pointing rays intersections for the computation of the point of interest (POI) that the user is pointing to is developed. Simulation results show that this POI computation method outperforms the traditional ray-casting based by 76.5% in cluttered environments and 36.25% in combined cluttered and non-cluttered scenarios. The whole system is developed and demonstrated using a robotics simulator framework. The simulations show how voice and pointing commands performed by the user update the predefined autonomous path, based on the recognized command semantics. In addition, a dialog feedback strategy is proposed to solve conflicting situations such as ambiguity in the POI identification. This additional step is able to solve all the previously mentioned POI computation inaccuracies. In addition, it allows the user to confirm, correct or reject the performed commands in case the system misunderstands them

Advanced flight control system study

A fly by wire flight control system architecture designed for high reliability includes spare sensor and computer elements to permit safe dispatch with failed elements, thereby reducing unscheduled maintenance. A methodology capable of demonstrating that the architecture does achieve the predicted performance characteristics consists of a hierarchy of activities ranging from analytical calculations of system reliability and formal methods of software verification to iron bird testing followed by flight evaluation. Interfacing this architecture to the Lockheed S-3A aircraft for flight test is discussed. This testbed vehicle can be expanded to support flight experiments in advanced aerodynamics, electromechanical actuators, secondary power systems, flight management, new displays, and air traffic control concepts

Ubiquitous Integration and Temporal Synchronisation (UbilTS) framework : a solution for building complex multimodal data capture and interactive systems

Contemporary Data Capture and Interactive Systems (DCIS) systems are tied in with various technical complexities such as multimodal data types, diverse hardware and software components, time synchronisation issues and distributed deployment configurations. Building these systems is inherently difficult and requires addressing of these complexities before the intended and purposeful functionalities can be attained. The technical issues are often common and similar among diverse applications. This thesis presents the Ubiquitous Integration and Temporal Synchronisation (UbiITS) framework, a generic solution to address the technical complexities in building DCISs. The proposed solution is an abstract software framework that can be extended and customised to any application requirements. UbiITS includes all fundamental software components, techniques, system level layer abstractions and reference architecture as a collection to enable the systematic construction of complex DCISs. This work details four case studies to showcase the versatility and extensibility of UbiITS framework’s functionalities and demonstrate how it was employed to successfully solve a range of technical requirements. In each case UbiITS operated as the core element of each application. Additionally, these case studies are novel systems by themselves in each of their domains. Longstanding technical issues such as flexibly integrating and interoperating multimodal tools, precise time synchronisation, etc., were resolved in each application by employing UbiITS. The framework enabled establishing a functional system infrastructure in these cases, essentially opening up new lines of research in each discipline where these research approaches would not have been possible without the infrastructure provided by the framework. The thesis further presents a sample implementation of the framework on a device firmware exhibiting its capability to be directly implemented on a hardware platform. Summary metrics are also produced to establish the complexity, reusability, extendibility, implementation and maintainability characteristics of the framework.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) grants - EP/F02553X/1, 114433 and 11394

An overview of lidar imaging systems for autonomous vehicles

Lidar imaging systems are one of the hottest topics in the optronics industry. The need to sense the surroundings of every autonomous vehicle has pushed forward a race dedicated to deciding the final solution to be implemented. However, the diversity of state-of-the-art approaches to the solution brings a large uncertainty on the decision of the dominant final solution. Furthermore, the performance data of each approach often arise from different manufacturers and developers, which usually have some interest in the dispute. Within this paper, we intend to overcome the situation by providing an introductory, neutral overview of the technology linked to lidar imaging systems for autonomous vehicles, and its current state of development. We start with the main single-point measurement principles utilized, which then are combined with different imaging strategies, also described in the paper. An overview of the features of the light sources and photodetectors specific to lidar imaging systems most frequently used in practice is also presented. Finally, a brief section on pending issues for lidar development in autonomous vehicles has been included, in order to present some of the problems which still need to be solved before implementation may be considered as final. The reader is provided with a detailed bibliography containing both relevant books and state-of-the-art papers for further progress in the subject.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version