A novel on-board Unit to accelerate the penetration of ITS services

In-vehicle connectivity has experienced a big expansion in recent years. Car manufacturers have mainly proposed OBU-based solutions, but these solutions do not take full advantage of the opportunities of inter-vehicle peer-to-peer communications. In this paper we introduce GRCBox, a novel architecture that allows OEM user-devices to directly communicate when located in neighboring vehicles. In this paper we also describe EYES, an application we developed to illustrate the type of novel applications that can be implemented on top of the GRCBox. EYES is an ITS overtaking assistance system that provides the driver with real-time video fed from the vehicle located in front. Finally, we evaluated the GRCbox and the EYES application and showed that, for device-to-device communication, the performance of the GRCBox architecture is comparable to an infrastructure network, introducing a negligible impact

Making Transport Safer: V2V-Based Automated Emergency Braking System

An important goal in the field of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) is to provide driving aids aimed at preventing accidents and reducing the number of traffic victims. The commonest traffic accidents in urban areas are due to sudden braking that demands a very fast response on the part of drivers. Attempts to solve this problem have motivated many ITS advances including the detection of the intention of surrounding cars using lasers, radars or cameras. However, this might not be enough to increase safety when there is a danger of collision. Vehicle to vehicle communications are needed to ensure that the other intentions of cars are also available. The article describes the development of a controller to perform an emergency stop via an electro-hydraulic braking system employed on dry asphalt. An original V2V communication scheme based on WiFi cards has been used for broadcasting positioning information to other vehicles. The reliability of the scheme has been theoretically analyzed to estimate its performance when the number of vehicles involved is much higher. This controller has been incorporated into the AUTOPIA program control for automatic cars. The system has been implemented in Citroën C3 Pluriel, and various tests were performed to evaluate its operation

The measurement of driver describing functions in simulated steering control tasks

Measurements of driver describing functions in steering control tasks have been made using a driving simulator. The task was to regulate against a random crosswind gust input on a straight roadway, in order to stay in the center of the lane. Although driving is a multiloop task in general, the forcing function and situation were configured so that an inner-loop visual cue feedback of heading angle of heading rate would dominate, and the driver's response was interpreted to be primarily single-loop. The driver describing functions were measured using an STI describing function analyzer. Three replications for each subject showed good repeatability within a subject. There were some intersubject differences as expected, but the crossover frequencies, effective time delays, and stability margins were generally consistent with the prior data and models for similar manual control tasks. The results further confirm the feasibility of measuring human operator response properties in nominal control tasks with full (real-world) visual field displays

An Open-Source Microscopic Traffic Simulator

We present the interactive Java-based open-source traffic simulator available at www.traffic-simulation.de. In contrast to most closed-source commercial simulators, the focus is on investigating fundamental issues of traffic dynamics rather than simulating specific road networks. This includes testing theories for the spatiotemporal evolution of traffic jams, comparing and testing different microscopic traffic models, modeling the effects of driving styles and traffic rules on the efficiency and stability of traffic flow, and investigating novel ITS technologies such as adaptive cruise control, inter-vehicle and vehicle-infrastructure communication

Intelligent automatic overtaking system using vision for vehicle detection

There is clear evidence that investment in intelligent transportation system technologies brings major social and economic benefits. Technological advances in the area of automatic systems in particular are becoming vital for the reduction of road deaths. We here describe our approach to automation of one the riskiest autonomous manœuvres involving vehicles – overtaking. The approach is based on a stereo vision system responsible for detecting any preceding vehicle and triggering the autonomous overtaking manœuvre. To this end, a fuzzy-logic based controller was developed to emulate how humans overtake. Its input is information from the vision system and from a positioning-based system consisting of a differential global positioning system (DGPS) and an inertial measurement unit (IMU). Its output is the generation of action on the vehicle’s actuators, i.e., the steering wheel and throttle and brake pedals. The system has been incorporated into a commercial Citroën car and tested on the private driving circuit at the facilities of our research center, CAR, with different preceding vehicles – a motorbike, car, and truck – with encouraging results

Modelling Safety-Related Driving Behaviour - the Impact of Parameter Values

Traffic simulation models make assumptions about the safety-related behaviour of drivers. These assumptions may or may not replicate the real behaviour of those drivers who adopt seemingly unsafe behaviour, for example running red lights at signalised intersections or too closely following the vehicles in front. Such behaviour results in the performance of the system that we observe but will often result in conflicts and very occasionally in accidents. The question is whether these models should reflect safe behav- iour or actual behaviour. Good design should seek to enhance safety, but is the safety of a design neces- sarily enhanced by making unrealistically optimistic assumptions about the safety of drivers behaviour? This paper explores the questions associated with the choice of values for safety-related parameters in simulation models. The paper identifies the key parameters of traffic simulation models and notes that sev- eral of them have been derived from theory or informed guesswork rather than observation of real behav- iour and that, even where they are based on observations, these may have been conducted in circumstances quite different to those which now apply. Tests with the micro-simulation model DRACULA demonstrate the sensitivity of model predictions—and perhaps policy decisions—to the value of some of the key param- eters. It is concluded that, in general, it is better to use values that are realistic-but-unsafe than values that are safe-but-unrealistic. Although the use of realistic-but-unsafe parameter values could result in the adop- tion of unsafe designs, this problem can be overcome by paying attention to the safety aspects of designs. The possibility of using traffic simulation models to culties involved in doing so are discussed

Video-assisted Overtaking System enabled by V2V Communications

V2X (Vehicle-to-Everything) is a promising technology to diminish road hazards and increase driving safety. This thesis focuses in the transmission of video between vehicles (V2V, Vehicle-to-Vehicle) in an overtaking situation, helping drivers to be more aware and less error-prone in these situations. In the implementation, the vehicle reads from vehicle's CAN and GPS data to setup the system, streams his Line of Sight to the overtaking vehicle and uses DSRC as the communication technology

Integration of vehicular network and smartphones to provide real-time visual assistance during overtaking

[EN] The Intelligent Transportation Systems area has experienced great developments in the recent past, although suffering from slow adoption ratios thus depriving consumers of many interesting and innovative applications. The only solution to this problem is to develop Intelligent Transportation Systems solutions using the already available technologies that are within the grasp of the common people, to make them cost-effective, quick to deploy and easy to adopt. We have therefore developed an affordable Intelligent Transportation Systems that make use of standard smartphones to assist drivers when overtaking. The system autonomously creates a network among the close-by vehicles and provides drivers with a real-time video feed from the one located just ahead. Our system seamlessly offers a better view of the road, and of any vehicle travelling in the opposite direction, being especially useful when the front view of the driver is blocked by large vehicles. We have validated our overtaking assistance system, in both laboratory environment and realistic scenarios. The laboratory tests involved choosing the most effective video codec between MJPEG and H.264, for providing real-time video streaming. Then, using the chosen codec, we performed the outdoor tests to further tune our application to maximise performance. The preliminary results from our experiments allow being optimistic about the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed system.The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was partially supported by the Special Research Fund – funding for joint doctorates of the Ghent University with scholarship code 01SF3316, and the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Programa Estatal de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación Orientada a los Retos de la Sociedad, Proyectos I+D+I 2014, Spain, under grant TEC2014-52690-R.Patra, S.; Tavares De Araujo Cesariny Calafate, CM.; Cano, J.; Veelaert, P.; Philips, W. (2017). Integration of vehicular network and smartphones to provide real-time visual assistance during overtaking. International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks (Online). 13(12):1-17. doi:10.1177/1550147717748114S117131