Cohorts and Groups for Safe and Efficient Autonomous Driving on Highways

International audienceWe introduce constructs aimed at reconciling safety and efficiency for ad hoc highway-centric clusters of autonomous vehicles. The cohort construct is an ad hoc variant of the platoon construct. We show how to enforce safe inter-vehicle spacing in cohorts despite inaccurate vehicle space-time coordinates and failing telemetry capabilities, via neighbor-to-neighbor beaconing based on short range unidirectional communications. Worst-case analytical results are established for safe spacing bounds. A classical spacing algorithm is revisited, and proofs of usability in a discrete time beaconing model are given. Along with the group construct, which is based on prefixing usage of sensing-based solutions with omnidirectional inter-vehicular communications, we present a categorization of safety-critical scenarios. We discuss the benefits resulting from prefixing vehicle maneuvers with vehicle role assignments in safety-critical scenarios

Safe Automated Driving on Highways – Beyond Today's Connected Autonomous Vehicles

International audienceSafe automated driving rests on safety-critical (SC) inter-vehicular (IV) coordination. Safety criticality is defined unambiguously via the Bounded Move requirements. We show that today's autonomous vehicles and upcoming connected vehicles fail to meet these requirements by huge margins. We present a cyber-physical construct, IV communication protocols and IV agreement algorithms that achieve SC IV coordination in highway autonomic vehicular networks. Worst-case termination time bounds of protocols and algorithms are given, which allows for checking that the Bounded Move requirements are met. These solutions lay the ground for novel standards specifically aimed at safety. Interestingly, they also meet privacy requirements. Some open problems raised with automated driving are put into perspective

Autonomic Vehicular Networks: Safety, Privacy, Cybersecurity and Societal Issues

Safety, efficiency, privacy, and cybersecurity can be achieved jointly in self-organizing networks of communicating vehicles of various automated driving levels. The underlying approach, solutions and novel results are briefly exposed. We explain why we are faced with a crucial choice regarding motorized society and cyber surveillance

Some Open Safety Issues in Vehicular Networks

International audienceIn this position paper, we briefly review some accepted beliefs which may hide open issues regarding dependability or timeliness in SC scenarios, and we give examples of shortcomings and challenges. Due to space constraints, we focus solely on protocol/algorithmic design issues, failures, limitations of on-board technologies, and radio channel access latencies in the presence of contention. Despite their importance, software issues (correct instantiations of protocols, algorithms, and applications) are not addressed here. We use the terminology defined by S. Shladover: Automation is autonomy augmented with wireless communication capabilities. For fulfilling goal Ω, should we shoot for autonomous driving or for automated driving? Should we trust human supervision (ultimately, if ever needed, some human is in charge) or full automation rather (absolutely no human intervention)

Smart Mobility Cities: Connecting Bristol and Kuala Lumpur project report

Financed by the British Council Institutional Links program this Smart Mobility Cities project has opened a fascinating window on a journey of discovery linking Bristol and Kuala Lumpur. This journey was in part directed towards the realisation of Smart Mobility solutions to the socio-economic and environmental challenges of global urbanisation. Beyond this, the journey was also concerned to strengthen research and innovation partnerships between the UK and the emerging knowledge economy of Malaysia, enabling UK social scientists to collaborate on challenging global issues with international researchers and vice versa. This Smart Mobility Cities project report presents innovative, creative and yet fully practical solutions for these societal challenges. Solutions that explore a range of opportunities, whichinclude those arising from new urban governance requirements, and which are in-line with visions for sustainable urban mobility.These Smart Mobility solutions have arisen from intensive co-design and co-creation engagement with a diversity of stakeholders. Research co-production has linked the principal university partners of the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol, and Taylor’sUniversity, Kuala Lumpur, together with the Malaysia Institute of Transport (MITRANS), Universiti Teknologi Mara, and the University Sains Malaysia (USM) in intensive engagement with stakeholder interests in both UK and Malaysia over a two-year period

Safety in Vehicular Networks—On the Inevitability of Short-Range Directional Communications

Mobile Ad Hoc NetworksInternational audienceSafety implies high dependability and strict timeliness under worst-case conditions. These requirements are not met with existing standards aimed at inter-vehicular communications (V2V) in vehicular networks. Ongoing research targets medium-range omnidirectional V2V communications and short-range directional communications, which we refer to as neighbor-to-neighbor (N2N) communications. Focusing on the latter, we investigate the time-bounded message dissemination (TBMD) problem as it arises in platoons and ad hoc vehicle strings, referred to as cohorts. Informal specifications of TBMD, of a solution, are given. We show how to guarantee cohort-wide dissemination of any N2N message generated by a cohort member, either spontaneously or upon receipt of a V2V message. Dissemination time bounds are given for worst-case conditions regarding N2N channel contention and N2N message losses. These results add to previously demonstrated merits of short-range directional communications as regards safety in vehicular networks

Integrated Safety and Efficiency in Intelligent Vehicular Networks: Issues and Novel Constructs

International audienceWe present the cohort and the group constructs which are aimed at reconciling safety and efficiency for intelligent vehicular networks on roads and highways, and show how platoons and vehicular ad hoc networks can be structured as cohorts and groups. Fundamental implications of safety requirements are reviewed. A rationale for on-board systems based on diversified functional redundancy is developed, illustrated with a proposal for neighbor-to-neighbor periodic beaconing based on short range unidirectional communications meant to withstand telemetry failures. Worst-case analytical results are given for safe inter-vehicle spacing in cohorts despite inaccurate vehicle space-time coordinates and failing telemetry capabilities. The group construct is based on prefixing usage of sensing-based solutions with omnidirectional communications. Benefits resulting from prefixing vehicle maneuvers with vehicle role assignments are illustrated with the on-ramp-merging safety-critical scenario

Fast Distributed Agreements and Safety-Critical Scenarios in VANETs

International audienceWe examine longitudinal and lateral safety-critical scenarios as they arise in VANETs, in the presence of concurrency and unreliable inter-vehicular communications. The Fast Distributed Agreement (FastDA) problem, as well as solutions to the longitudinal and the lateral instantiations of FastDA, are examined and informally specified. Analytical expressions of worst-case time bounds for reaching agreement are provided. We verify that stringent safety requirements are met through realistic examples drawn from various safety-critical scenarios