A LiDAR Point Cloud Generator: from a Virtual World to Autonomous Driving

3D LiDAR scanners are playing an increasingly important role in autonomous driving as they can generate depth information of the environment. However, creating large 3D LiDAR point cloud datasets with point-level labels requires a significant amount of manual annotation. This jeopardizes the efficient development of supervised deep learning algorithms which are often data-hungry. We present a framework to rapidly create point clouds with accurate point-level labels from a computer game. The framework supports data collection from both auto-driving scenes and user-configured scenes. Point clouds from auto-driving scenes can be used as training data for deep learning algorithms, while point clouds from user-configured scenes can be used to systematically test the vulnerability of a neural network, and use the falsifying examples to make the neural network more robust through retraining. In addition, the scene images can be captured simultaneously in order for sensor fusion tasks, with a method proposed to do automatic calibration between the point clouds and captured scene images. We show a significant improvement in accuracy (+9%) in point cloud segmentation by augmenting the training dataset with the generated synthesized data. Our experiments also show by testing and retraining the network using point clouds from user-configured scenes, the weakness/blind spots of the neural network can be fixed

Emergent situations for smart cities: A survey

A smart city is a community that uses communication and information technology to improve sustainability, livability, and feasibility. As any community, there are always unexpected emergencies, which must be treated to preserve the regular order. However, a smart system is needed to be able to respond effectively to these emergent situations. The contribution made in this survey is twofold. Firstly, it provides a comprehensive exhaustive and categorized overview of the existing surveys for smart cities.  The categorization is based on several criteria such as structures, benefits, advantages, applications, challenges, issues, and future directions. Secondly, it aims to analyze several studies with respect to emergent situations and management to smart cities. The analysis is based on several factors such as the challenges and issues discussed, the solutions proposed, and opportunities for future research. The challenges include security, privacy, reliability, performance, scalability, heterogeneity, scheduling, resource management, and latency. Few studies have investigated the emergent situations of smart cities and despite the importance of latency factor for smart city applications, it is rarely discussed

Cyber-physical system based on image recognition to improve traffic flow: A case study

Vehicular traffic in metropolitan areas turns congested along either paths or periods. As a case study, we have considered a mass transport system with a bus fleet that rides over exclusive lanes across streets and avenues in an urban area that does not allow the circulation of lightweight vehicles, cargo, and motorcycles. This traffic flow becomes congested due to the absence of restriction policies based on criteria. Moreover, the exclusive lanes are at ground level, decreasing lanes for other vehicles. The main objective of this proposal consists of controlling the access to the exclusive lanes by a cyber-physical system following authorization conditions, verifying the permission status of a vehicle by the accurate recognition of license plates to reduce traffic congestion. Therefore, in the case of invading an exclusive lane without permission, the vehicle owner gets a notification of the fine with the respective evidence

A preliminary approach to intelligent x-ray imaging for baggage inspection at airports

Identifying explosives in baggage at airports relies on being able to characterize the materials that make up an X-ray image. If a suspicion is generated during the imaging process (step 1), the image data could be enhanced by adapting the scanning parameters (step 2). This paper addresses the first part of this problem and uses textural signatures to recognize and characterize materials and hence enabling system control. Directional Gabor-type filtering was applied to a series of different X-ray images. Images were processed in such a way as to simulate a line scanning geometry. Based on our experiments with images of industrial standards and our own samples it was found that different materials could be characterized in terms of the frequency range and orientation of the filters. It was also found that the signal strength generated by the filters could be used as an indicator of visibility and optimum imaging conditions predicted