Filter for Car Tracking Based on Acceleration and Steering Angle

The motion of a car is described using a stochastic model in which the driving processes are the steering angle and the tangential acceleration. The model incorporates exactly the kinematic constraint that the wheels do not slip sideways. Two filters based on this model have been implemented, namely the standard EKF, and a new filter (the CUF) in which the expectation and the covariance of the system state are propagated accurately. Experiments show that i) the CUF is better than the EKF at predicting future positions of the car; and ii) the filter outputs can be used to control the measurement process, leading to improved ability to recover from errors in predictive tracking

A disaster risk assessment model for the conservation of cultural heritage sites in Melaka Malaysia

There exist ongoing efforts to reduce the exposure of Cultural Heritage Sites (CHSs) to Disaster Risk (DR). However, a complicated issue these efforts face is that of ‘estimation’ whereby no standardised unit exist for assessing the effects of Cultural Heritage (CH) exposed to DR as compared to other exposed items having standardised assessment units such as; ‘number of people’ for deaths, injured and displaced, ‘dollar’ for economic impact, ‘number of units’ for building stock or animals among others. This issue inhibits the effective assessment of CHSs exposed to DR. Although there exist several DR assessment frameworks for conserving CHSs, the conceptualisation of DR in these studies fall short of good practice such as international strategy for disaster reduction by United Nations which expresses DR to being a hollistic interplay of three variables (hazard, vulnerability and capacity). Adopting such good practice, this research seeks to propose a mechanism of DR assessment aimed at reducing the exposure of CHSs to DR. Quantitative method adopted for data collection involved a survey of 365 respondents at CHSs in Melaka using a structured questionnaire. Similarly, data analysis consisted of a two-step Structural Equation Modelling (measurement and structural modelling). The achievement of the recommended thresholds for unidimensionality, validity and reliability by the measurement models is a testimony to the model fitness for all 8 first-order independent variables and 2 first-order dependent variables. While hazard had a ‘small’ but negative effect, vulnerability had a ‘very large’ but negative effect on the exposure of CHSs to DR. Likewise, capacity had a ‘small’ but positive effect on the exposure of CHSs to DR. The outcome of this study is a Disaster Risk Assessment Model (DRAM) aimed at reducing DR to CHSs. The implication of this research is providing insights on decisions for DR assessment to institutions, policymakers and statutory bodies towards their approach to enhancing the conservation of CHSs

Towards Full Automated Drive in Urban Environments: A Demonstration in GoMentum Station, California

Each year, millions of motor vehicle traffic accidents all over the world cause a large number of fatalities, injuries and significant material loss. Automated Driving (AD) has potential to drastically reduce such accidents. In this work, we focus on the technical challenges that arise from AD in urban environments. We present the overall architecture of an AD system and describe in detail the perception and planning modules. The AD system, built on a modified Acura RLX, was demonstrated in a course in GoMentum Station in California. We demonstrated autonomous handling of 4 scenarios: traffic lights, cross-traffic at intersections, construction zones and pedestrians. The AD vehicle displayed safe behavior and performed consistently in repeated demonstrations with slight variations in conditions. Overall, we completed 44 runs, encompassing 110km of automated driving with only 3 cases where the driver intervened the control of the vehicle, mostly due to error in GPS positioning. Our demonstration showed that robust and consistent behavior in urban scenarios is possible, yet more investigation is necessary for full scale roll-out on public roads.Comment: Accepted to Intelligent Vehicles Conference (IV 2017

Estimation of automobile-driver describing function from highway tests using the double steering wheel

The automobile-driver describing function for lateral position control was estimated for three subjects from frequency response analysis of straight road test results. The measurement procedure employed an instrumented full size sedan with known steering response characteristics, and equipped with a lateral lane position measuring device based on video detection of white stripe lane markings. Forcing functions were inserted through a servo driven double steering wheel coupling the driver to the steering system proper. Random appearing, Gaussian, and transient time functions were used. The quasi-linear models fitted to the random appearing input frequency response characterized the driver as compensating for lateral position error in a proportional, derivative, and integral manner. Similar parameters were fitted to the Gabor transformed frequency response of the driver to transient functions. A fourth term corresponding to response to lateral acceleration was determined by matching the time response histories of the model to the experimental results. The time histories show evidence of pulse-like nonlinear behavior during extended response to step transients which appear as high frequency remnant power