Integration of an adaptive infotainment system in a vehicle and validation in real driving scenarios

More services, functionalities, and interfaces are increasingly being incorporated into current vehicles and may overload the driver capacity to perform primary driving tasks adequately. For this reason, a strategy for easing driver interaction with the infotainment system must be defined, and a good balance between road safety and driver experience must also be achieved. An adaptive Human Machine Interface (HMI) that manages the presentation of information and restricts drivers’ interaction in accordance with the driving complexity was designed and evaluated. For this purpose, the driving complexity value employed as a reference was computed by a predictive model, and the adaptive interface was designed following a set of proposed HMI principles. The system was validated performing acceptance and usability tests in real driving scenarios. Results showed the system performs well in real driving scenarios. Also, positive feedbacks were received from participants endorsing the benefits of integrating this kind of system as regards driving experience and road safety.Postprint (published version

NLSC: Unrestricted Natural Language-based Service Composition through Sentence Embeddings

Current approaches for service composition (assemblies of atomic services) require developers to use: (a) domain-specific semantics to formalize services that restrict the vocabulary for their descriptions, and (b) translation mechanisms for service retrieval to convert unstructured user requests to strongly-typed semantic representations. In our work, we argue that effort to developing service descriptions, request translations, and matching mechanisms could be reduced using unrestricted natural language; allowing both: (1) end-users to intuitively express their needs using natural language, and (2) service developers to develop services without relying on syntactic/semantic description languages. Although there are some natural language-based service composition approaches, they restrict service retrieval to syntactic/semantic matching. With recent developments in Machine learning and Natural Language Processing, we motivate the use of Sentence Embeddings by leveraging richer semantic representations of sentences for service description, matching and retrieval. Experimental results show that service composition development effort may be reduced by more than 44\% while keeping a high precision/recall when matching high-level user requests with low-level service method invocations.Comment: This paper will appear on SCC'19 (IEEE International Conference on Services Computing) on July 1

A Systematic Process for Implementing Gateways for Test Tools

Test automation is facing a new challenge because tools, as well as having to provide conventional test functionalities, must be capable to interact with ever more heterogeneous complex systems under test (SUT). The number of existing software interfaces to access these systems is also a growing number. The problem cannot be analyzed only from a technical or engineering perspective; the economic perspective is as important. This paper presents a process to systematically implement gateways which support the communication between test tools and SUTs with a reduced cost. The proposed solution does not preclude any interface protocol at the SUT side. This process is supported using a generic architecture of a gateway defined on top of OSGi. Any test tool can communicate with the gateway through a unique defined interface. To communicate the gateway and the SUT, basically, the driver corresponding to the SUT software interface has to be loaded

Towards a network management solution for vehicular delay-tolerant networks

Vehicular networks appeared as a new communication solution where vehicles act as a communication infrastructure, providing data communications through vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) or vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications. Vehicular Delay-Tolerant Networks (VDTNs) are a new disruptive network architecture assuming delay tolerant networking paradigm where there are no end-to-end connectivity. In this case the incial node transmits the data to a closed node, the data will be carried by vehicles, hop to hop until the destination. This dissertation focuses on a proposal of a network management solution, based standard protocol Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) to VDTN networks. The developed solution allows control a VDTN netowork through a Network Management System (NMS) with the objective to detect and, if it’s possible, anticipate, possible errors on network. The research methodology used was the prototyping. So, it was built a network management module to the laboratorial prototype, called VDTN@Lab. The system built include a MIB (Management Information Base) placed in all vehicular network nodes. The solution was built, demonstrated, validated and evaluated their performance, being ready for use.As redes veiculares foram desenhadas para permitir que os veículos possam transportar dados criando assim um novo tipo de redes, caracterizando-se por dois tipos de comunicação: comunicações veículo-para-veículo (V2V) ou comunicações veículo-parainfra-estrutura (V2I). Redes veiculares intermitentes (do Inglês Vehicular Delay-Tolerant Networks - VDTNs) surgiram como uma nova arquitectura de rede de dados onde os veículos são utilizados como infra-estruturas de comunicação. As VDTNs caracterizam-se por serem redes veiculares baseadas no paradigma de comunicações intermitentes. Nas redes VDTN não existe uma ligação permanente extremo a extremo entre o emissor e o receptor. Neste caso, o nó inicial transmite os dados para um nó que esteja junto dele e assim sucessivamente, os dados vão sendo transportados pelos veículos, salto a salto até ao destinatário final. Esta dissertação centra-se na proposta de uma solução de gestão de rede, baseada no protocolo estandardizado Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) para redes VDTN. A solução construída permite controlar uma rede VDTN através de um sistema de gestão de rede (do Inglês Network Management System - NMS) com o objectivo de detectar e, se possível antecipar, possíveis erros na rede. A metodologia de investigação utilizada foi a prototipagem. Assim, foi construído um módulo de gestão de redes para o protótipo laboratorial, chamado VDTN@Lab. O sistema construído inclui uma MIB (Management Information Base) que é colocada em todos os nós de uma rede veicular, tanto fixos como móveis. A solução foi construída, demonstrada, validade e avaliado o seu desempenho, estando assim pronta para ser utilizada

Automatic Accident Detection: Assistance Through Communication Technologies and Vehicles

[EN] The symbiosis between communication technologies and vehicles offer a priceless opportunity to improve assistance to people injured in traffic accidents, providing information about the incident to reduce the response time of emergency services. Determining more accurately the required human and material resources for each particular accident could significantly reduce the number of victims. This paper presents our novel system prototype especially designed to detect and provide faster assistance for traffic accidents, thereby minimizing the consequences on the passengers¿ health. The proposed system requires each vehicle to be endowed with an On-Board Unit responsible for detecting and reporting accident situations to an external Control Unit that estimates its severity, allocating the necessary resources for the rescue operation. The development of our prototype based on off-the-shelf devices, and its validation at the Applus+ IDIADA Automotive Research Corporation facilities, shows that our system could notably reduce the time needed to alert and deploy the emergency services after an accident takes place.This work was partially supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Spain, under Grant TIN2011-27543-C03-01, and by the Diputación General de Aragón, under Grant subvenciones destinadas a la formación y contratación de personal investigador.Fogue, M.; Garrido, P.; Martínez, FJ.; Cano Escribá, JC.; Tavares De Araujo Cesariny Calafate, CM.; Manzoni, P. (2012). Automatic Accident Detection: Assistance Through Communication Technologies and Vehicles. IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine. 7(3):90-100. doi:10.1109/MVT.2012.2203877S901007

A framework for supporting network continuity in vehicular IPv6 communications

The appearance of recent standards about cooperative ITS architectures towards a reference communication stack has been an inflection point in the research about vehicular networks. The ISO Communication Access for Land Mobiles (CALM) and the ETSI European ITS communication architecture have paved the way towards real and interoperable vehicular cooperative systems. Within these convergent proposals, IPv6 communications are recognized as a key component to enable traffic efficiency and infotainment applications. The proper operation of these applications and the achievement of value-added ITS services require an uninterrupted network connectivity. This paper addresses this problem by proposing a novel communication stack to support the provision of continuous and secure IPv6 vehicular communications. The solution follows the ISO/ETSI guidelines for the development of cooperative ITS systems and is based on standardized technologies such as Network Mobility (NEMO) protocol to provide an integral management of IPv6mobility. The solution integrates IEEE 802.21 media independent handover services for optimizing the handover process. While the support to the handover optimization offered by the proposed ITS communication stack is demonstrated through a mobility use case, a real testbed supporting most of the communications features is developed to validate and assess the real performance of the stack design.This work has been sponsored by the European Seventh Framework Program, through the ITSSv6 (contract 270519) and FOTsis (contract 270447) projects; the Ministry of Science and Innovation, through the Walkie-Talkie project (TIN2011-27543-C03); and the Seneca Foundation, by means of the GERM program (04552/GERM/06)

The design and implementation of serious games for driving and mobility

The automotive and transportation sectors are showing consistent improvements in trends and standards concerning the safe and convenient travel of the road users. In this growing community of road users, the driver performance is a notable factor as many on-road mishaps emerge out of poor driver performance. In this research work, a case-study and experimental analysis were conducted to improve driver performance through the deployment of serious games. The primary motive of this work is to stimulate the on-road user performance through immediate feedback, driver coaching, and real-time gamification methods. The games exploit the cloud-based architecture to retrieve the driver performance scores based on real-time evaluation of vehicle signals and display the outcomes on game scene by reflecting the game parameters based on real-world user performance (in the context of driving and mobility). The deployment of games in cars is the topic of interest in current state-of-the-art, as there are more factors associated with it, such as safety, usability, and willingness of the users. These aspects were taken into careful consideration while designing the paradigm of gamification model. The user feedback for the real-time games was extracted through pilot tests and field tests in Genova. The gamification and driver coaching aspects were tested on various occasions (plug-in and field tests conducted at 5 European test sites), and the inputs from these field tests enabled to tune the parameters concerning the evaluation and gamification models. The improvement of user behavior was performed through a virtuous cycle with the integration of virtual sensors to the serious gaming framework. As the culmination, the usability tests for the real-time games were conducted with 18 test users to understand the user acceptance criteria and the parameters (ease of use and safety) that would contribute to the deployment of games. Other salient factors such as the impact of games, large-scale deployment, collaborative gaming and exploitation of gaming framework for 3rd party applications were also investigated in this research activity. The analysis of the usability tests states that the user acceptance of the implemented games is good. The report from usability study has addressed the user preferences in games such as duration, strategy and gameplay mechanism; these factors contribute a foundation for future research in implementing the games for mobility

A study of remotely booking slot for vehicle using Internet of Things

Internet Of Things (IoT) is a continually growing area which aids us to unite diverse objects. The proposed system exhibits the universal notion of utilizing cloud-based intellectual automotive car parking facilities in smart cities as a notable implementation of the IoT. Such services demonstrate to be a noteworthy part of the IoT and thus serving users in no small amount due to its pure commerce positioned qualities. Electromagnetic fields are being used by RFID to detect and track tags ascribed to objects automatically. The RFID technology is used in this system along with suitable IoT protocols to evade human interference, which reduces the cost. Information is bartered using readers and tags. RFID and IoT technologies are mainly used to automate the guide systems and make them strong and more accurate. Open Service Gateways can be effectively used for this module. This system established on the consequence of IoT and the purposes are solving the chaos, bewilderment, and extensive backlogs in parking spaces like malls and business parks that are customary as a consequence of the increased use of automobiles. The proposed work aims to solve these problems and offer car drivers a hassle-free and instantaneous car parking experience. While a number of nodes are positioned depends on topographical restrictions, positioning of prominent anchor sensor nodes in the smart parking is a primary factor against which the efficiency and cost of the parking system hang. A Raspberry Pi would act as a mini-computer in our system. A suitable smallest path methodology would be cast-off to obtain the shortest distance between the user and every car park in the system. Hence, the pausing time of the user is decreased. This work furthermore includes the practice of remotely booking of a slot with the collaboration of android application exercising smartphones for the communication between the Smart Parking system and the user