VANET Applications: Hot Use Cases

Current challenges of car manufacturers are to make roads safe, to achieve free flowing traffic with few congestions, and to reduce pollution by an effective fuel use. To reach these goals, many improvements are performed in-car, but more and more approaches rely on connected cars with communication capabilities between cars, with an infrastructure, or with IoT devices. Monitoring and coordinating vehicles allow then to compute intelligent ways of transportation. Connected cars have introduced a new way of thinking cars - not only as a mean for a driver to go from A to B, but as smart cars - a user extension like the smartphone today. In this report, we introduce concepts and specific vocabulary in order to classify current innovations or ideas on the emerging topic of smart car. We present a graphical categorization showing this evolution in function of the societal evolution. Different perspectives are adopted: a vehicle-centric view, a vehicle-network view, and a user-centric view; described by simple and complex use-cases and illustrated by a list of emerging and current projects from the academic and industrial worlds. We identified an empty space in innovation between the user and his car: paradoxically even if they are both in interaction, they are separated through different application uses. Future challenge is to interlace social concerns of the user within an intelligent and efficient driving

Charging Electric Vehicles Using Opportunistic Stopovers

The diffusion of electric vehicles asks for efficient energy replenishment, which requires geographical and temporal coordination of shared charging resources. We introduce a novel charging methodology that exploits users\u2019 opportunistic mobility. This paper focuses on vehicle stopovers detecting potential charg- ing opportunities. Our mobility-assisted methodology protects users privacy and permits a hybrid centralized/distributed ap- proach avoiding clashes with other potential users. A preliminary analysis on our charging system, obtained with mobility data from the field, shows that among the available charging stations, some are more relevant and have a key role in serving electric vehicle recharge. This can be useful for further investigation on designing charging networks and aggregating electric vehicles towards charging stations

Towards hybrid driver state monitoring : review, future perspectives and the role of consumer electronics

The purpose of this paper is to bring together multiple literature sources which present innovative methodologies for the assessment of driver state, driving context and performance by means of technology within a vehicle and consumer electronic devices. It also provides an overview of ongoing research and trends in the area of driver state monitoring. As part of this review a model of a hybrid driver state monitoring system is proposed. The model incorporates technology within a vehicle and multiple broughtin devices for enhanced validity and reliability of recorded data. Additionally, the model draws upon requirement of data fusion in order to generate unified driver state indicator(-s) that could be used to modify in-vehicle information and safety systems hence, make them driver state adaptable. Such modification could help to reach optimal driving performance in a particular driving situation. To conclude, we discuss the advantages of integrating hybrid driver state monitoring system into a vehicle and suggest future areas of research

A smart high-voltage cell detecting and equalizing circuit for LiFePO4 batteries in electric vehicles

A battery management system (BMS) plays an important role in electric vehicles (EVs) in order to achieve a reasonable-lasting lifetime. An equalizing method is essential in order to obtain the best performance. A monitoring system is required to check if any cell voltage is high or low. In this paper, an equalizing and monitoring system for an ultra-light electric vehicle is proposed. The monitoring system detects if one cell is fully charged or all cells are fully charged and the equalizing system tops each cell at the desired voltage. To solve this issue, a light-emitting diode (LED) band gap is used as a voltage reference to inform the user if any cell is at its high voltage. A smart monitoring displays on the liquid crystal display (LCD), if one cell is high or all cells are high. This detection also provides a signal to the microcontroller to turn on/off the charger if all cells are high. Also, a Bluetooth module was designed to command the microcontroller the charger to turn on/off via voice/text message by using a smartphone. Additionally, a new smart monitoring system based on the Bluetooth model (HC05) and mobile app has been made in order to monitor individual cell voltage. A major feature of the system is to draw a very-low current, so that the system does not contribute significantly to the self-discharge of the battery and the circuit does not need sophisticated control. Manufacturers of large electric vehicles may have more intelligent systems that may require a permanent connection to the grid and allow high standby losses, where more state of charge (SOC) may be lost per day. The paper is rather focused on reducing the standby losses, and to activate the equalizer only when charging and/or driving. The experimental results are performed in order to verify the feasibility of the proposed circuit

A New Vehicle Localization Scheme Based on Combined Optical Camera Communication and Photogrammetry

The demand for autonomous vehicles is increasing gradually owing to their enormous potential benefits. However, several challenges, such as vehicle localization, are involved in the development of autonomous vehicles. A simple and secure algorithm for vehicle positioning is proposed herein without massively modifying the existing transportation infrastructure. For vehicle localization, vehicles on the road are classified into two categories: host vehicles (HVs) are the ones used to estimate other vehicles' positions and forwarding vehicles (FVs) are the ones that move in front of the HVs. The FV transmits modulated data from the tail (or back) light, and the camera of the HV receives that signal using optical camera communication (OCC). In addition, the streetlight (SL) data are considered to ensure the position accuracy of the HV. Determining the HV position minimizes the relative position variation between the HV and FV. Using photogrammetry, the distance between FV or SL and the camera of the HV is calculated by measuring the occupied image area on the image sensor. Comparing the change in distance between HV and SLs with the change in distance between HV and FV, the positions of FVs are determined. The performance of the proposed technique is analyzed, and the results indicate a significant improvement in performance. The experimental distance measurement validated the feasibility of the proposed scheme

Collision avoidance algorithm for intelligent vehicles using ITS-G5

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática e de ComputadoresDada a importância de melhorar a segurança rodoviária, é extremamente importante a criação de mecanismos que auxiliem a redução do número de acidentes rodoviários. Posto isto, esta tese visa o desenvolvimento de um algoritmo para alerta de colisões veiculares, capaz de apoiar o condutor na sua tarefa. O algoritmo proposta, inicialmente utiliza ITS-G5 como canal de comunicação entre veículos. No entanto, dada a necessidade de disponibilizar a aplicação à maioria dos utilizadores, apresenta-se também uma solução para smartphone que permite a utilização da mesma a utilizadores que não tenham acesso a uma OBU ITS-G5. Neste trabalho, o algoritmo de previsão de colisão foi definido e implementado e, para dar suporte à aplicação móvel, foi desenvolvido um ambiente híbrido entre ITS-G5 e redes celulares. A troca de informação é feita utilizando mensagens CAM. Dado a importância da latência no desempenho da aplicação, foram realizadas medições de latência para validar a solução proposta. Em geral, os melhores resultados foram obtidos aquando da utilização do 4G, obtendo uma latência média de 42 ms. O uso da rede 5G não alcançou as expectativas, pois esperavam-se menores latências que o 4G, mas apenas se verificaram latências similares e com maior instabilidade. Ao testar o algoritmo desenvolvido, foi utilizado um Digital Twin para auxiliar os testes à solução permitindo a criação de situações específicas de alto risco. Posto isto, a sua utilização foi útil para testar uma situação constante de mensagens recebidas com latência elevada originando uma situação em que a aplicação assume um cenário distinto da realidade que impede a deteção da colisão, quando a mesma existe (falso negativo).Given the importance of improving road safety, it is crucial to create mechanisms that reduce road accidents. Therefore, this thesis aims the development of a collision warning algorithm capable of supporting the drivers’ tasks by alerting them to possible collisions. The algorithm proposed, initially uses ITS-G5 as a communication channel between vehicles. However, given the need to provide the application to most users, a smartphone application is also presented, making this solution accessible to users that don’t have access to an ITS-G5 OBU. In this work, a collision warning algorithm was defined and implemented and, to support the smartphone application, a hybrid environment between ITS-G5 and cellular network was developed. Information is exchanged among players using CAM messages. Given the role that latency plays in the performance of this kind of application, latency measurements were performed to validate the proposed framework. In general, the best results were obtained when using 4G, obtaining an average of 42 ms in latency. The usage of the 5G network didn’t meet the expectations since it promises lower latencies than 4G, but similar latencies and greater instability have been observed at this stage. When testing the developed application, a digital twin was used to assist the algorithm tests allowing the creation of specific dangerous situations. Therefore, the digital twin was used to test a specific scenario of constant high latency messages creating a false negative situation, where a collision would be detected if latency was lower/admissible.N/

Driving style recognition for intelligent vehicle control and advanced driver assistance: a survey

Driver driving style plays an important role in vehicle energy management as well as driving safety. Furthermore, it is key for advance driver assistance systems development, toward increasing levels of vehicle automation. This fact has motivated numerous research and development efforts on driving style identification and classification. This paper provides a survey on driving style characterization and recognition revising a variety of algorithms, with particular emphasis on machine learning approaches based on current and future trends. Applications of driving style recognition to intelligent vehicle controls are also briefly discussed, including experts' predictions of the future development