Estimating Drivers Stress from GPS Traces

Driving is known as a daily stressor and measurement of driver\u27s stress in real-time can improve the awareness of stress for drivers, their cars, and their phones. Integrating sensors in future cars can help assess driver\u27s stress, but it requires either wearing sensors by the driver or instrumenting the car. In this thesis, we present GStress , a model to estimate driver\u27s stress using only Smartphone GPS traces. By obviating any burden on the driver or the car, our approach has a better chance of wider adoption worldwide. The GStress model is developed and evaluated from data collected in a mobile health user study where 10 participants wore physiological sensors for 7 days (for more than 10 hours) in their natural environment, including during driving. Each participant had 10 or more driving episodes over the course of the study (for a total of 37 hours of driving data). This being the first work of its kind, provides a correlation of over 0.7 between the actual and estimated driving stress by identifying some major factors such as stops, turns and brakings that contribute to the stress of a driver. Incorporation of other factors in the model as well as use of more advanced modeling approaches can further improve the accuracy of the model

Using mobility information to perform a feasibility study and the evaluation of spatio-temporal energy demanded by an electric taxi fleet

Half of the global population already lives in urban areas, facing to the problem of air pollution mainly caused by the transportation system. The recently worsening of urban air quality has a direct impact on the human health. Replacing today’s internal combustion engine vehicles with electric ones in public fleets could provide a deep impact on the air quality in the cities. In this paper, real mobility information is used as decision support for the taxi fleet manager to promote the adoption of electric taxi cabs in the city of San Francisco, USA. Firstly, mobility characteristics and energy requirements of a single taxi are analyzed. Then, the results are generalized to all vehicles from the taxi fleet. An electrificability rate of the taxi fleet is generated, providing information about the number of current trips that could be performed by electric taxis without modifying the current driver mobility patterns. The analysis results reveal that 75.2% of the current taxis could be replaced by electric vehicles, considering a current standard battery capacity (24–30 kWh). This value can increase significantly (to 100%), taking into account the evolution of the price and capacity of the batteries installed in the last models of electric vehicles that are coming to the market. The economic analysis shows that the purchasing costs of an electric taxi are bigger than conventional one. However, fuel, maintenance and repair costs are much lower. Using the expected energy consumption information evaluated in this study, the total spatio-temporal demand of electric energy required to recharge the electric fleet is also calculated, allowing identifying optimal location of charging infrastructure based on realistic routing patterns. This information could also be used by the distribution system operator to identify possible reinforcement actions in the electric grid in order to promote introducing electric vehicles

Applications of Trajectory Data From the Perspective of a Road Transportation Agency: Literature Review and Maryland Case Study

Transportation agencies have an opportunity to leverage increasingly-available trajectory datasets to improve their analyses and decision-making processes. However, this data is typically purchased from vendors, which means agencies must understand its potential benefits beforehand in order to properly assess its value relative to the cost of acquisition. While the literature concerned with trajectory data is rich, it is naturally fragmented and focused on technical contributions in niche areas, which makes it difficult for government agencies to assess its value across different transportation domains. To overcome this issue, the current paper explores trajectory data from the perspective of a road transportation agency interested in acquiring trajectories to enhance its analyses. The paper provides a literature review illustrating applications of trajectory data in six areas of road transportation systems analysis: demand estimation, modeling human behavior, designing public transit, traffic performance measurement and prediction, environment and safety. In addition, it visually explores 20 million GPS traces in Maryland, illustrating existing and suggesting new applications of trajectory data

Map-aided dead-reckoning using only measurements of speed

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this recordWe present a particle-based framework for estimating the position of a vehicle using map information and measurements of speed. The filter propagates the particles’ position estimates by means of dead-reckoning, and then updates the particle weights using two measurement functions. The first measurement function is based on the assumption that the lateral force on the vehicle does not exceed critical limits derived from physical constraints. The second is based on the assumption that the driver approaches a target speed derived from the speed limits along the upcoming trajectory. Assuming some prior knowledge of the initial position, performance evaluations of the proposed method indicate that end destinations often can be estimated with an accuracy in the order of 100 [m]. These results expose the sensitivity and commercial value of speed data collected in many of today’s insurance telematics programs, where the data is used to adjust premiums and provide driver feedback. We end by discussing the strengths and weaknesses of different methods for anonymization and privacy preservation in telematics programs